PA-RISC or ITANIUM emulation

[Andy Kosela]

Is there any product out there (open source or commercial) to allow to emulate PA-RISC or ITANIUM architecture on top of x86.
There is even a IBM mainframe emulator (hercules) but I can't find one for PA-RISC...

[Torsten.]

Is it possible to install hp-ux on a pc?
No, it isn't.

see also

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1145482
[Moderator edit: The link is no longer valid. Please refer to https://support.hpe.com/]
or search the forum for "hp-ux on pc" or similar.

[Andy Kosela]

I'm perfectly aware of the above you mentioned. However is there a way to virtualize PA-RISC/ITANIUM. I heard Intel has/had Itanium emulator developed in-house. There are open source emulators supporting VAX, Alpha architecture, so why not PA-RISC?

[Torsten.]

PA-RISC has nothing to do with Intel.
This is proprietary HP technology (precision architecture) used on HP9000 servers running HP-UX (or MPE in the past).

What is your goal?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Sorry what you ask for has not been done. To do so may require proprietary access which HP would not grant to OS source code.

If you want PA-RISC, buy a PA-RISC system.

PA-RISC new system sales are schedule by HP to stop December 31, 2008.

SEP

[Andy Kosela]

My goal is to run HP-UX in PA-RISC or Itanium emulator on top of x86, the same way I can run OpenVMS on Alpha Emulator es40 http://sourceforge.net/projects/es40

[Torsten.]

This will bring us back basically to the question "Is it possible to install hp-ux on a pc?" - you already know the answer.

HP-UX will only run on certified hardware - including virtual machines running on certified hardware.

[Andy Kosela]

Steven,
OpenVMS is also a proprietary operating system. However I can run it in VAX or Alpha emulator on my x86_64 laptop. I think HP should assist open source developers in developing such an emulator.
Paul Weissmann who is the maintainer of www.openpa.net website might me the best person to ask about this. I definetly think that such emulator would preserve the historic significance of PA-RISC line.

[Fabio Ettore]

Hi Andy,

my few cents about this topic.
I really often read about the opinion HP should release HP-UX for another platform other than PA-RISC and Itanium, for example x86 or an emulation for x86.
On one hand I understand that and often read something about someone tries that, about this read the following thread regarding the possibility to have HP-UX installed on a tadpole laptop:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1236187

[Moderator edit: Removed the broken link]

Never seen that, you can investigate about it.

Also you state that all other companies (even a IBM mainframe emulator does exist) do that possible.
On another hand that doesn't mean HP has to.

Conclusion. HP-UX can be installed only on the following platforms:

https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/4AA4-7673ENW

I know that is not what you are looking for by this thread but I think it will stay another of thousands discussions about having HP-UX (even emulated) on x86.

Best regards,
Fabio

[Srimalik]

The answer to ur question is "no".

But, I would like to see/find/have/work-on a HPUX system running on x86 using some virtual machine in the middle.

I think VMware does emulates sparc on x86 not sure though(used VM ware a long time back It can be that VMware only runs solaris x86 in virtual machine).

[Torsten.]

But you can still work on real systems via http://www.testdrive.hp.com/current.shtml

[Moderator edit: Removed the broken link. Please refer to https://support.hpe.com/]

[Andy Kosela]

Actually when you are a member of DSPP you have access to fully virtual HP-UX systems via PVP (with root access, remote power switch etc.). You don't have root access with testdrive program.

I'm sure though that someday such emulator will see the light of the day. I see the excellent work of PARISC-LINUX project which is even sponsored officially by HP. I would see the same for PA-RISC emulator on x86. Technically it can be done as we see from such projects as VAX or Alpha emulator...

[Andy Kosela]

After looking at official HP site I found there is already some project that is going in this direction.

From http://ski.sourceforge.net/

Ski is an IA-64 instruction set simulator, originally written by the Hewlett-Packard Company. It simulates the IA-64 architecture as defined by the Intel Itanium 2 architecture manuals. This is not a full platform simulator; i.e., no system chipset or PCI bus simulation is done. However, ski supports the full instruction set of the architecture, including privileged instructions and associated semantics.

Ski can be used in two operating mode: user- and system-mode. In user mode, you can run user level applications directly on top of the simulator. The emulation stops at the system call boundary. The system call is emulated by calling the host OS, such as x86 Linux. Conversions between 64-bit and 32-bit parameters are done by ski as needed. This allows fast execution of user programs. Most system calls are emulated, though the emulation is not always 100 percent accurate.

In system-mode, operating-system kernel development and execution is possible because interrupts and virtual memory behaviors are simulated. In this mode you can actually run the Linux kernel and, once booted, user applications can be run on top of the simulated kernel.

[Andy Kosela]

Torsten, I'm ready to communicate to you and others that you are wrong in assuming that you can't run HP-UX on a PC.

By the grace of the Most High I came across another two projects that let you run IA-64 emulator on top of x86:

1. Simics, a comercial simulator, but apparently free for personal/academics use.
2. SoftSDV, difficult to get (internal Intel IA-64 simulator), but should do whole system simulation.

I need to check Simics. It seems to be a very mature project.

[Torsten.]

Sounds not this bad, but simulating an Itanium CPU is just a single step --- how about the chipset? Maybe the next problem.

We will see what the future brings ... ;-)

[Srimalik]

>But you can still work on real systems via http://www.testdrive.hp.com/current.shtml Moderator [above link is no longer valid, please visit https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/  to find the latest info ]

I use testdrive machines somtimes. But the machines are unaccessible most of the times.

Some users also run CPU hogging programs on these machines(mainly linux) which make them slow, I reported this to the testdrive team some time back but..no response :-(.

[Andy Kosela]

Srikrishan,
You need to apply for PVP access (you need to be DSPP member) to get access to your personal VM.