HP's first press release about Pervasive Solutions included information about its initial set of operating environments to be supported as well as investment protection plans for its current customers.The text of the release follows:
Hewlett-Packard Company today outlined its technology roadmap to the 21st century, a set of core technologies called the Pervasive Solutions Foundation. These technologies include the microprocessor, systems design, operating systems, compilers and middleware that will form the foundation for HP's future systems. The Pervasive Solutions Foundation will be designed to provide a single architecture, choice of operating systems, outstanding performance, increased scalability and backward compatibility with today's applications. These new computing systems will be based on Intel's IA-64 microprocessors, which are based on the instruction set architecture jointly developed by HP and Intel.The Pervasive Solutions Foundation will provide a single architecture for HP's computing products, spanning desktop PCs to the highest-performing enterprise servers. These new HP systems will support UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT operating systems while offering superior interoperability across the enterprise. HP will leverage its broad enterprise expertise in designing systems with the performance and scalability required to meet customers' needs.
"To succeed in this new era, people will need computers that are more powerful and that are optimized to handle more applications and data, running in a range of operating environments," said Richard E. Belluzzo, HP executive vice president and head of the Computer Organization.
HP expects to ship future computer systems with Intel's first Merced processor production. HP is working with enterprise-software and operating-system vendors to ensure industry-wide acceptance, which ultimately will benefit customers by providing increased performance and optimal choice of operating systems and applications.
HP has defined a set of design criteria for HP systems to ensure that customers purchasing HP PA-RISC or HP IA-32 systems today will have the investment protection they need as they take full advantage of IA-64 based systems. These customers can be assured that their applications will run without recompilation because of the compatibility that has been designed into the entire HP systems architecture.
Integral to the development of HP's next-generation computing systems are a number of technology projects under way that are expected to differentiate HP in the marketplace significantly. These projects include systems design, operating-system optimization, advanced compiler development and application-support programs with industry-leading independent software vendors. Each technology project will optimize the systems and application performance of the current and next-generation family of computers.