PA-8000 will battle Alpha

HEWLETT-Packard last week unveiled the latest chip in its Precision Architecture series of RISC (reduced-instruction-set computing) microprocessors, a powerful new high-end 64-bit processor that will start to appear in the company's UNIX workstation products in the first half of next year.

The new PA-8000 is HP's first 64-bit processor, putting it in direct competition with Digital Equipment's Alpha series. The PA-RISC processors are used to power the company's popular HP9000 series of UNIX boxes.

Hewlett-Packard Hong Kong's computer systems marketing and channel manager Michael Lam said the PA-8000 processor more than doubled the performance of the current high-end chip, the PA-7200.

Mr Lam said the new architecture also had built-in support for symmetrical multiprocessing for machines containing up to a dozen processors.

The new PA-8000 processors are currently available in small test quantities to systems developers and will become available in bigger volumes toward the end of the year. But systems containing the chips from the new series are not expected to appear on the market until the first half of next year.

The new chips will power HP's mainstream UNIX boxes for at least the next two to three years.