Difference between N-Class and K-Class servers

[Amit Manna_6]

Can anybody tell me the difference in architecture between N-Class and K-Class serves

[Naveej.K.A]

hi,

This link gives a very good picture about your doubts..

http://www.alimartech.com/9000_servers.htm

If it helps please assign points

with best wishes
Naveej

[Ted Buis]

There are good pictures in "hp-ux 11i tuning and performance" by Robert F. Sauers.
Briefly, the K-class was released in 1995 and the N-class in 1999. The K-class had a memory processor bus with 960MB/sec speed. It used different processors, from 32-bit PA-7200 at 100MHz to 64-bit PA-8200 at 240MHz.
There were different models based on I/O expansion ability. I/O to the left of the core I/O module (looking from the rear) was HP-PB which was a shared I/O bus with maximum speed of 32MB/sec peak (your performance would be less!). One slot on the core I/O and all slots to the right of the core I/O were HSC slots which had a maximum bus speed of 120-160MB/sec peak. Again, your performance would be less and this bus again could be shared, but there could be from 0-3, additional HSC buses in the K-class. If you increased the number of CPUs in the K5x0 beyond 4, you couldn't expand the extra 2 HSC buses. Memory could be on one or two memory carriers, but this didn't impact the max number of CPUs or I/O cards. The N-class started with the pa-8500 at 360MHz (A3639A) and went to the pa-8600 at 550MHz(A3639B). The rp7400 (A3639C) supported the pa-8700 processors at up to 750MHz, and was basically a renamed and updated N-class. I/O was PCI, and each slot was a separate PCI bus. The memory bus speed depended on the number of memory carriers (up to 4) and
each carrier added about 2.1GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The N-class could support 8 CPUs and full memory with no tradeoffs with I/O.
In short, the performance potential of the N-class was about 2X to 16X of the K-class, depending on which systems you want to compare.