HP Announces SPP1600 Exemplar Scalable System with 60 Percent Increase in Technical Application Performance; With Industry's Top Integrated Storage-management Solution, SPP1600 Provides Unmatched High-end Capabilities.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 1996-- Hewlett-Packard Company today introduced the Exemplar SPP1600 (Scalable Parallel Processor), a new high-end technical system that delivers up to a 60 percent increase in applications performance over the previous model, the SPP1200. In performance benchmark tests, the SPP1600 has shown increases of 66 percent on SPECint95rate and 50 percent on Linpack 1000. This new system offers high-performance capabilities for a range of applications, including mechanical and electrical design; petroleum research and exploration; seismic processing; and university, scientific and biomedical research.

In addition to delivering significant speedup and reduced time to solution on leading applications, the SPP1600 offers customers the industry's top integrated storage management solution. No other vendor offers a single, scalable solution with the following combination: -0-

   o    binary compatibility with workstations;

   o    high-speed application throughput;

   o    storage management for high-performance computing
        environments; and

   o    a well-defined technology path to next-generation
        systems.

    Scalable Storage Management for the SPP1600 and K-class servers
delivers integrated, scalable data- and file-management capabilities
that are unmatched in the industry.  Scalable Storage Management
solutions enable users to implement enterprisewide hierarchical
storage management (HSM), workstation and server backup and
virtual-disk-management functions.
    "Within three months of acquiring Convex for its supercomputing
expertise, HP is setting new standards for what customers should
expect from a high-performance supplier," said Paul Bemis, marketing
manager for technical servers at HP's Workstation Systems Division.
"The SPP1600 represents a new class of solutions that combine
competitively priced application performance and complete
storage-management capabilities."
    "With the SPP as the high-end technical server, HP offers the only
technical product line that is binary-compatible and scalable from
desktop to supercomputer, while retaining the ease-of-programming
features of SMP systems," said Steven J. Wallach, chief technology
officer at HP's Convex Technology Center.

SUBCOMPLEX MANAGER -- POINT AND CLICK TO ALLOCATE RESOURCES

    Users can easily configure SPP1600 systems to support both
high-bandwidth technical applications and storage-management tasks.
Through the use of an innovative subcomplex manager, available only
on HP's SPP systems, users can automatically reconfigure CPU
resources to meet dynamic computing requirements.
    The subcomplex manager allows the system administrator to
graphically view SPP processor and memory resources and to change
configurations on-line.  With the subcomplex manager, administrators
can subdivide processors into multiple, logical SMP systems that work
independently.  For example, a system can be configured to run a
compute-intensive electronic design application simultaneously with
complex data/file management tasks -- or, a system may be entirely
dedicated to HSM.

THE SPP1600 SYSTEM -- ENHANCED PROCESSOR, I/O, AND OS

    The new SPP1600 features, combined with the 64-bit features of
SPP-UX, such as file systems and files up to 1 Terabyte, provide a
superior platform for technical applications and for reliable,
scalable storage management.
    The SPP1600 features a four-times-larger processor cache than
the SPP1200 and enhanced I/O and operating-system capabilities for
powerful performance increases, while maintaining compatibility with
both HP-UX(1) desktop applications and previous Exemplar models.  The
SPP1600 architecture groups PA-RISC(2) processors, memory and I/O
components into subunits, called hypernodes, with the result being a
balanced approach to scalability.
    "We find that the Exemplar is a strong performer," said George
Lake, professor of astronomy, University of Washington in Seattle.
"Each node runs our code at nearly twice the speed of an IBM SP2 node
and more than three times the speed of a Cray T3D.  Our kernal hits
nearly 3 gigaflops (1 GFLOPS = 1 billion floating-point instructions
per second) on 24 nodes, with a sustained rate for the full code of
2.1 gigaflops.  This is nearly 10 times the flop rate that we
achieved on the Cray C90."  Dr. Lake is a principle investigator for
the Grand Challenge program being conducted at the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois at
Champaign.
    The SPP1600 I/O subsystem, based on the industry-standard PCI bus,
provides significantly higher I/O throughput, allowing scalable
access to external devices.  It also enables multiple network
connections that are fully scalable at speeds limited only by the
network's raw performance.
    The system is available in two models.  The SPP1600/CD features up
to 16 PA-7200 processors, providing up to 3.8 GFLOPS peak performance
and 4GB of physical memory.  The SPP1600/XA features up to 64
processors, delivering performance levels as high as 15 GFLOPS with
up to 16GB of total memory.
    The SPP1600 features binary compatibility with the HP-UX operating
system, making available for users thousands of widely used
applications.  Those applications include hundreds of the same
scientific and technical solutions that run on HP workstations and
servers.  For the highest performance, applications may use shared
memory or explicit message passing (EMP) parallelization, or a
combination of both.

SCALABLE STORAGE SERVERS

    Based on the industry's broadest line of compatible UNIX(R) system
servers, HP's K-class and SPP-based Scalable Storage Servers provide
a complete range of storage capabilities.  Some vendors may offer
only portions of the data solutions customers need.
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    Storage Servers solutions include the following:

   o    high-performance platforms tuned for storage
        management;

   o    robotic tape libraries for automated data access; and

   o    solid archive and network-backup software.

    Entry-level systems are turnkey solutions based on the
affordable, high-performance K-class multiprocessor servers.  These
cost-effective data systems also include FDDI or Ethernet networking
capability, RAID disk cache, robotic tape library and data-management
software.
    The modular Storage Server product line is complemented by the
Scalable Storage Manager, a suite of software products that provides
Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) and data-delivery applications.
This suite includes the following:

   o    UniTree+ Storage Manager, HP's implementation of the
        industry-standard Unitree Central File Manager, which
        provides long-term storage for very large quantities of
        data by creating a single storage system consisting of
        thousands of pieces of media;

   o    CAM Central Archive Manager, which provides a
        completely automated backup and archival environment,
        using the storage capability of UniTree+; and

   o    Virtual Disk Manager, which extends the
        high-performance file system on Exemplar servers by
        transparently migrating files to and from the UniTree+
        Storage Manager.

For higher-end processing and throughput requirements, the Exemplar Storage Server provides customers with unprecedented flexibility in configuring systems to suit their applications. Unlike solutions other vendors may offer, HP's storage solutions are unconstrained by system architecture. Customers can choose from a range of options in network interface, storage capacity and management software to suit their application environment. With that capability, the balance between centralization and distribution of storage and compute can be based on data-flow requirements rather than on system limitations.

U.S. PRICES AND AVAILABILITY

SPP1600 systems and K-class servers and SPP1600-based Scalable Storage Servers are available now.

Prices for SPP1600/CD systems begin at $106,000 for a two-CPU system. Prices for SPP1600/XA systems begin at $349,500 for an eight-CPU system.

Prices for K-class system storage servers begin at $285,000. SPP1600 Scalable Storage Servers begin at under $600,000.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 105,200 employees and had revenue of $31.5 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.

Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

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X/Open is a trademark of X/Open Company Limited in the UK and other countries.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.

CONTACTS: HP

Kathy Sowards, 214/497-3061

e-mail: [e-mail]

or

Copithorne & Bellows for HP

Kathy Madison, 617/252-0606

e-mail: [e-mail]