Dave Snow, Hewlett-Packard
With the March 2000 shipment of MPE/iX Release 6.5 and all
subsequent releases, HP e3000 Servers now support greater than 3.75
GBs of main memory. This is good news for many applications for
which memory sizes limited the number of users that could be supported
or for which had the application's performance was limited by the
3.75 GB maximum memory size. However, since the MPE/iX Release
6.5 Communicator only indicates that "some" HP e3000 Servers will
benefit form this increase, clarifications need to be given as to which HP
e3000 Servers will actually benefit from this maximum memory size increase.
HP e3000 Ordering Menus for adding HP e3000 memory used by HP sales
people and by HP e3000 Authorized Resellers already note these limitations.
With MPE/iX Release 7.0 Express 1, A500 Servers can use up
to 8 GBs of main memory and N4000 Servers can use up to 16 GBs of
main memory.
For HP e3000 servers prior to the A- and N-Class, only HP
e3000 Servers that use the PA8000 or PA8200 processor chips (the
PA-RISC 64 bit chips) with MPE/iX Release 6.5 will be able to use
memory sizes greater than 3.75 GBs. This includes a number of 9x9KS Servers
(the 929KS/030, 939KS/030, 979KS, 989KS/x00 and 989KS/x50 Servers)
and the 997 Servers.
A number of HP e3000 Servers based on PA7xxx
processor chips (the PA-RISC 32 bit chips) can still use Release
6.5 and many of its added new features (e.g. WebServer software,
file sizes up to 128 GBs, up to 511 disk spindles, etc.). However
these PA7xxx processor based servers will not be able to support
memory sizes greater than 3.75 GBs. These include the 9x7, 9x8,
939KS, 929KS/020, 939KS/020, 959KS, 969KS/x00, 969KS/x20, 992/990,
995/991 and 996 Servers.
For those HP e3000 9x9KS Servers that do
support greater than 3.75 GB of memory, the upper limit is now 8
GB with MPE/iX Release 6.5 and subsequent releases. To achieve these
large memory sizes, customers should consider using the 9x9KS 512
MB memory modules, which can be intermixed with the smaller 9x9KS
memory modules.
For the HP e3000 997 Servers, the upper limit is
now 16 GB with MPE/iX Release 6.5 and subsequent releases. To achieve
these large memory sizes, customers should consider using one or
two 8 GB memory carrier cards. This 8 GB memory carrier card can
support from one to eight 1 GB memory modules. The 8 GB memory
carrier card can be field-installed and can be intermixed with the
128 MB (not actively sold), 256 MB, 512 MB and 768 MB HP e3000 997
memory array boards. However, since there are a limited number
of slots for plugging memory into the 997 Server, some smaller memory
array cards may need to be removed to support large processor and
large memory configurations.
Previous communications (e.g. the Spring
2000 HP e3000 Advisor) to 99x end-users have noted that sales of
some 99x memory products (the 256 MB, 512 MB and 768 MB memory arrays)
would be discontinued as of August 1, 2000. HP e3000 997 customers
using MPE/iX Release 6.0 Express 1, Release 6.5 or subsequent releases
can continue to purchase the 8 GB memory carrier board and associated
1 GB memory module (although Release 6.0 Express 1 and Express 2
customers are limited to using only the first 3.75 GB of any loaded memory).
So in summary, many HP e3000 applications will see added
performance or greater numbers of users using larger memory configurations
(please check with your application providers for details). However,
greater than 3.75 GB memory configurations are limited to PA8000
and PA8200 based servers (929KS/030, 939KS/030, 979KS, 989KS/x00, 989KS/x50
Servers and the 997 Servers) using MPE/iX Release 6.5 and beyond,
and A500 and N4000 servers using MPE/iX Release 7.0 Express 1.