Concerns over the performance potential of the HP 3000 may be addressed largely by the impending introduction of PA-8000 processors for the 3000. Rich Sevcik, a former general manager of the 3000 division and general manager of the Systems Technology Group, also said he expects that HP 3000 compiler technology upgrades will be a part of the PA-8000 rollout over the next few years.
HP's current plans include designs for PA-8000s, 8200s and 8500s, according to Sevcik. The new chips will be produced and manufactured in HP facilities, using designs that will culminate in .25-micron circuit traces and the first on-chip cache in PA-RISC HP 3000 implementations.
The smaller trace-size packs more electronics closer together and exponentially increases performance. To put the PA-8500's .25 microns in perspective, consider that the first generation of PA-RISC designs used .80 micron traces. In the processor design game, smaller traces mean faster chips -- as well as better yields to drive costs down.
Capturing the extra performance for MPE/iX systems will require updated compilers, which would need to be offered with the new chips, Sevcik said.
"When we say that we're going to have MPE/iX on the PA-8000, that includes the compilers," Sevcik said. Sevcik added that scheduling for the compiler renovation is in the hands of Commercial Systems Division GM Harry Sterling.
"My personal opinion is that we have the best technology people in the world in compilers," Sevcik said. Intel's primary benefit in working with HP on the next RISC generation has been tapping HP's compiler expertise, according to analysts.
Although there isn't any confirmation yet that MPE/iX will be ported onto that HP/Intel chip, Sevcik points out that pre-announcing a chip decision years in advance hasn't been Hewlett-Packard's style in the RISC era. He prefers to focus on more near-term product deliveries, ones that will significantly extend the HP 3000's power.
"The fact that we're talking about the 8500 now is an indication that it is 12 to 18 months away, he said. "We'll keep PA-RISC strong for many years to come."
The distinction Sevcik makes calls attention to HP's own design, which the joint HP/Intel project is supposed to overtake in the future. That HP/Intel project, code-named Tahoe, is yielding something called the Pervasive Computing Architecture. Tahoe is first delivering the Merced family of chips at some point in the next few years, perhaps by the end of 1998.
In the meantime, the PA-8000 line will serve HP 3000 systems well, according to Sevcik. It's in HP's best interest to continue to keep its own processor technology strong, even while the Tahoe work begins to produce processors, he said.
"When we made this announcement, we said we're going to keep PA-RISC strong, and they're going to keep X86 strong. And we're going to be introducing this new architecture in parallel," Sevcik said.
"We're trying to get a good understanding of what the technical work is going to be to put MPE/iX on the Merced chip," Sevcik said. "We're also trying to look at the needs of the HP 3000 customers. But from a performance point of view, the 8500 is going to be a hot chip."
How hot? Sevcik said HP is predicting integer benchmarks of 25 SPEC Int95 for the 8500. This compares to about 7 SPEC Int95 for the current top end of the 3000 line, a PA-7150. The primary difference in the interim design, the PA-8200, will be an increased clock rate to deliver an Int95 mark of 16.
The extra performance in the PA-8000 line will arrive only after source code is recompiled. Application developers can run their older PA-RISC code on the new systems without any recompiling, but they won't see much performance improvement. The PA-8000 systems require these changes from application developers because the chip uses a different binary than the PA-7000 line. The new chips represent the 2.0 design of PA-RISC, while the PA-7000s are the 1.1 release.That means developers will have to recompile source code to get programs running faster on the PA-8000 line.
"It's not trivial, but it's not a huge issue," Sevcik said of the recompiling task. HP has been shipping PA-8000 workstation systems since June, and he said that developers in that market have been moving to the PA-RISC 2.0 binaries without serious effort.
Sevcik admits that HP knows even its fastest chips will still lag behind the needs of application developers, a problem every manufacturer faces. "There's an insatiable demand out there for performance," he said. "People are always finding new things to do, and from a programming point of view, looking for more efficient ways to do it, typically by consuming more hardware since it's getting cheaper."