Jeffrey@OFFICE@sri-unix (12/10/82)
HP's SuperDesktop System, the HP9000
Today in Palo Alto, Hewlett Packard presented a seminar highlighting
Computer Aided Engineering applications of its small computer
products. After an hour's worth of rather interesting presentations,
the crowd was turned loose to examine about twenty HP desktop
workstations upon which a number of third party software applications
were being demonstrated.
I headed directly for the HP9000 which was half hidden by a large
projection screen that had been used during the presentations.
The HP9000 is obviously HP's new pride and joy. One of the
presentations had been a glossy video taped presentation which
recounted some of the history of the 9000. HP's primary
representative, Mike Radisich of HP Ft. Collins CO (the home of the
9000), introduced the video tape as HP's answer to DG's "The Soul of
a Machine". I didn't find the tape to be very interesting even though
it did contain a number of interviews with HP people who had
participated in the development of the 9000. The machine itself is
something else.
The 9000 is described by HP as a real technological breakthrough.
This claim stems from the super density VLSI chips which are used to
implement the processors and memory of the system. The system's
processor is implemented by over 450,000 devices (transistor
equivalents) which are packed on a square chip whose side measures
about a quarter of an inch. The 9000's I/O processor is implemented
on a similar chip ws. For comparison,
remember that the Motorola 68000 contains about 68000 devices.
HP is taking orders for the system and is currently promising
delivery in twelve weeks. Thus it appears that HP is able to produce
these dense chips in production quantities. According to the local
(Palo Alto) HP sales people, orders for the 9000 have been moving
very well since its announcement several weeks ago.
System Overview
The HP9000 is a desktop computer which, according to HP, has the
power of a mainframe. The system is implemented as one or more
processors, one or more I/O processors, and up to 2.5MB of memory -
all connected by a high speed bus. All of the subsystems are 32-bit
oriented; this is the first true 32-bit micro.
The configuration I saw contained one processor board, one I/O
processor board, 1MB of memory, a 10MB winchester, a 256KB floppy
disk, a color display with light pen, a full keyboard, and a dot
matrix printer. All of these components were integrated into a
single housing.
The keyboard (not detachable) sits in front of a larger but yet low
rectangle box which contains the two disk units, the electronics card
cage, and the printer. The display was perched on top of this box
behind and above the printer. The footprint of the system must be
something like 18 inches (width) by 18 inches (depth) - its not a
particularly small desktop. Inside the main box, the printer and
disks take up most of the space. The card cage holding the system's
processors and memory is a small unit perhaps 8 inches by 5 inches by
5 inches. It looks as if this unit can be easily removed. The
boards themselves are each are about 7 inches by 4.5 inches.
Processors
Each system processor runs at 18MHz and includes logic to implement
32-bit and 64-bit floating point operations. I copied some figures
from an HP data sheet:
32-bit 64-bit
------------ -------------
f.p. add 4.66 6.00
f.p. multiply 5.11 10.40
f.p. divide 6.44 15.95
(times in microseconds for floating point operations)
One of the faster instructions is the LDA (Load A) which was rated at
.56 microseconds.
The processor chip includes logic to help detect processor failures.
This came in handy when HP debugged the chip design. HP claims that
this logic will also help diagnose failures in the field.
Interestingly, the HP processor chips are not mounted in ceramic or
plastic casings to be attached to boards. Rather, the little (1/4")
chips themselves are mounted directly on the teflon coated copper
boards. Using this technique, the 9000 boards pack a great deal of
power into a small area. For example, the memory boards support
256KB of memory in an area of approximately 30 square inches. In
that area are mounted, 16 memory chips as well as some other
interface and integrity support chips. The copper substratum of the
boards is required to help dissipate heat.
The I/O processors each implement eight independent DMA channels.
HP's data sheet suggests that an I/O processor can transfer data at
up to 1MB per second.
Memory
The HP-9000 can accommodate up to 2.5MB of RAM in a single processor
system. Each additional processor board decreases the maximum memory
by 256KB since less slots are available for memory.
Memory boards hold 256KB of RAM configured from 128K RAM chips. I
was told that the memory had a cycle time of 110 nanoseconds and that
the memory was multi-ported. Apparently, in a multi-processor
system, different processors use different ports to increase the
overall memory bandwidth of the configuration. Even though the
memory is multi-ported, all memory accesses do travel over the system
bus.
I was told that the processors did map memory and that virtual memory
would be supported under Unix. This is one area, however, where the
otherwise confident HP representatives did not seem sure of
themselves. One silicon valley hi-tech watcher has a possible
explanation. Apparently, HP's processor architecture has some minor
flaws in the memory mapping area. In particular, virtual memory
supporting process stack frames may have to be tied to physical
memory and cannot be paged. Even if this is the case, it probably
will not seriously impact performance in a system that is primarily
meant to serve a single user.
The 9000's memory integrity features are interesting. The system
continually runs high speed checks utilizing Hamming codes to detect
temporary degradations caused by alpha particles. If such a
temporary malfunction is found, then the system remembers the erring
memory cell in an associative location which is used to stand in for
the bad cell. If the associative store becomes full, erring cells
are "forgotten" on a FIFO basis. The explanation given by HP was
that alpha particle problems are transient (i.e., do not cause
permanent hardware damage). The associative memory serves as enough
of a buffer in time to allow failing memory cells to regain there
proper operational characteristics (i.e., to heal themselves).
The 9000 also includes power up memory diagnostics that can detect
malfunctioning memory in blocks of 16k. If any bad blocks are found,
the system automatically configures itself around these and continues
on its way. A startup message notifies anyone watching, as to how
much memory is actually available for use and how much is not
operational. Startup is said to take about 15 seconds during which
time memory and presumably other tests are conducted.
Displays
The configuration I saw included HP's fancy color monitor. The
diagonal measurement of the monitor is about twelve inches. This
monitor is integrated into the desktop enclosure and is a raster scan
device displaying 455 x 560 pixels. The output for each pixel is
specified by a 16-bit quantity. Twelve bits select a color from 4096
possibilities. The remaining four bits control intensity. The
display has its own display memory which is organized into three
planes corresponding to R(ed), G(reen), and B(lue). Any of the planes
may be enable/disabled for display under software control.
The bottom of the display frame is segmented into eight buttons which
serve as function keys. This feature is very well done
(mechanically) and is very well utilized in demonstration software.
A black and white display may be substituted for the color display to
effect considerable savings (about $10,000). Alternatively, HP has a
separate color monitor available (separate enclosure) with double the
resolution of the integrated color monitor.
Up to 15 additional consoles may be connected to support users.
These will all consist of ASCII terminals connected through RS-232
ports. Only the first user interface (i.e., the built-in monitor and
keyboard) will have the 9000's special graphics features.
Matrix Printer
A black and white dot matrix printer is (optionally) included in the
desktop enclosure. HP is working on color ink jet printers but these
will not be available for some time. I wonder why they didn't
include a color dot matrix printer (several of these were displayed
at Comdex with prices well under $1000).
The resolution of the B/W printer is near that of the display and the
demonstration software I saw could copy anything showing on the
display to the printer.
I don't have any hard figures on the speed of the printer but it was
able to print an image of the display in a few seconds.
Software
The demonstration system was called "HP Rocky Mountain Basic". Its a
single user Basic-oriented system.
HP is porting Unix III to the 9000. They expect the port to be
complete in a few weeks and are planning to release Unix as a product
in the summer. Fortran and Pascal will come with Unix.
HP's graphics package from the HP1000 is reportedly integrated into
the Unix system. ISSCO, a leading business graphics software vendor,
will receive a HP9000 in a few weeks. They are going to bring
DISSPLA and TELL-A-GRAPH up using the 9000 as host and display
device.
HP said that it will also bring some important applications for the
9000 including IC layout, SPICE, and Nastran.
As soon as Unix is running, HP will try to ascertain how many users
the system can support. The current estimate is 10-16. Adding extra
processor boards should improve multi-user performance since HP says
that the system will "automatically" share the processors among the
users. Since the memory has provision for multiple processors, this
may actually work out quite well. Extra processors do not back each
other up to provide graceful degradation.
Hardware Options
HP did not describe the complete set of options which would be
available for the 9000. They did mention that larger winchester disks
with streaming tape backup were under development.
A local area network system based on the IEEE 802 CSMA proposal
(Ethernet) will also be provided.
Today's Demonstrations
All of the demonstrations I saw were graphic. The quality of the
demonstrations were fine. Many of them involved dynamic creation of
complex figures, curves, or shapes where the calculations required
were done on the fly. One of the demonstrations caused a complex
line image to be rotated. The image consisted of several hundred
line segments; rotational movements (several degrees) occurred
several times each second. That's got to require a great deal of
computation. The machine obviously has some muscle.
The colors displayed by the demonstration programs were quite
absorbing but the medium resolution of the monitor distracted from
what would have otherwise been very striking displays on high
resolution systems.
One very nice facet of the demo package was how well the function
keys were used. Each demo showed function key labeling at the bottom
of the display (directly above the eight integral function keys).
Normally the rightmost key was labelled "next menu" and the leftmost
key "exit". Depressing "next menu" did get you to another menu of
sub-options. The demos were nice to use.
Pricing
The price of the demonstrated configuration is about $50,000.
The color display of that configuration is listed at approximately
$10,000. The light pen is an additional $1,500.
The winchester and floppy count for another $10,000 bite.
A configuration with no disk, a B/W display, no printer might come in
at HP's advertised base price of $28,000.
Additional processor boards run about $10,000. It seems as if HP has
decided that anyone interested in this product should not flinch at
$10,000-size chunks.
Opinion
HP's 9000 product will probably find its niche in the high powered
workstation marketplace.
More important, however, is HP's current capability to develop,
manufacture, and utilize extremely dense circuitry. I expect to see
more applications of this capability from HP. It will be very
interesting to see how fast and in what manner HP brings its new
resources to the marketplace.
Jeffrey Stone
Menlo Park, CA
7 December, 1982
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