HP Upgrades Integrity NonStop, 9000 Servers

Hewlett-Packard Tuesday upgraded two of its server lines, one of which--its 9000 Unix family--is on its last incarnation.

At its ENSA@WORK conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, HP unveiled an update to its Integrity NonStop high-end Itanium-based servers, as well as introduced the last processor speedbump for its PA RISC-based servers, which will eventually mark the end of HP's proprietary chip line for Unix servers.

The new Integrity NonStop line, built on Intel's Itanium 64-bit processors, will be available in July, said Randy Meyer, director of strategy, technology and education for HP. The servers start at two processors and can scale up to 4,080 processors, and double the performance of HP's current NonStop line, he said.

Though the rate of adoption of Intel's 64-bit Itanium processors did not live up to its original hype, Meyer said HP's Itanium-based servers now represent about 25 percent to 27 percent of HP's enterprise systems business revenue. He said part of the reason for the slow uptake in adoption was that ISVs did not immediately upgrade their applications for Itanium, but that situation has now changed.

"We're seeing ISVs adopt it at a rapid rate, and the performance curve has been tremendous underneath that," Meyer said. "Every major ISV is running on Itanium90 percent of our Tier 1 ISVs have certified their applications already, and they've come over [onto Itanium] and had zero issues on the conversion."Still, many in the industry believe AMD's 64-bit x86 architecture has trumped Itanium, and out of the major hardware vendors, HP is betting the most on the Intel-based processor.

With the new Itanium processors comes the last milestone for HP's PA-RISC architecture, the development of which HP is abandoning in favor of its Itanium line. In addition to the Integrity NonStop line, HP also offers Itanium-based Integrity servers.

The new PA-8900 processor, which provide a 16 percent performance boost in comparison to previous technology, completes HP's PA-RISC roadmap, Meyer said.

The new processors will ship in HP 9000 servers that are priced from $4,300 to $113,600 and are available now. The 9000 servers also can be upgraded easily to multiple generations of HP's Itanium servers, as HP wants to provide a smooth transition to Integrity NonStop servers, Meyer said.

"You can now mix and match PA RISC processors in the same chassis with Itanium," Meyer said. "It's really big news."HP plans to support servers using PA-RISC processors until 2011, according to the company.