August 06, 2002, 5:10 PM — Hewlett-Packard Co. boosted its Unix server line Tuesday by adding faster processors to some midrange systems and announcing a new entry-level server to its AlphaServer family, which it acquired when it bought Compaq Computer Corp.
HP will now ship its 875MHz PA-8700+ processor with its 4-, 8- and 16-way servers, which use the HP-UX operating system and whose faster chips previously featured a maximum clock speed of 750MHz. The faster 875MHz processors were already available in HP's high-end Superdome Unix system, said Mark Hudson, director of worldwide marketing for HP's business critical systems.
An entry price for the rp5470 with one 875MHz PA-RISC processor and 1G byte of memory is US$36,000. A larger system with four processors and 4G bytes of memory is $88,000. An eight-processor rp7410 with 8G bytes of memory is $265,000. The larger rp8400 stacked with 16 processors and 16G bytes of memory is $527,000.
HP's Unix servers compete head-to-head against similar gear from Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM Corp. These servers are used to run core business applications and come with various hardware and software tools for keeping the systems up and running.
HP has also added faster chips to its AlphaServer products, which were originally designed by Digital Equipment Corp. and then acquired by Compaq. The AlphaServer ES45 and SC45 now ship with 1.25GHz EV68 processors, up from 1GHz. HP will ship new AlphaServer GS80, GS160 and GS320 servers as well with 1.224GHz EV68 chips later this month, HP said.
The ES45 with one 1.25GHz processor, 1G byte of memory and an 18G-byte disk is listed at $54,087. A GS80 server with one 1.224GHz chip, 1G byte of memory and an 18G-byte disk is $91,500.
Additionally, HP has started shipping a new two-processor DS25 server running on 1GHz processors. The system, which runs on Tru64 Unix, starts at $24,745 with one processor, 512M bytes of memory and an 18G-byte disk.
The DS25 fits into the low end of HP's AlphaServer line, which is also targeted at business applications.
