HP 9000 rp4410 & rp4440

Overview
Internals
External Connectors
References
Operating Systems
Benchmarks
Physical dimensions/Power

Overview

Time of introduction: 2004

The rp4400 series rp4410 and rp4440 servers are, as their smaller rp3410 and rp3440 siblings, one of the last PA-RISC-based HP 9000 systems. They are driven by up to two (rp4410) or four (rp4440) dual-core PA-8800 Mako or PA-8900 processors. The rp4400s are based around the Itanium 2/IA64-capable HP zx1 chipset, and technically very similar to the rp3400’s architecture. The systems can be rack-mounted (4U) or used stand-alone.

List price at time of introduction: US $21,000 for a (single-CPU, dual-core) rp4440.

Internals

CPU

rp4410

1 or 2 dual-core PA-8800 900MHz-1GHz with 1.5MB/1.5MB on-chip I/D L1 cache and 32MB off-chip L2 cache each
or
1 or 2 dual-core PA-8900 800MHz-1.1GHz with 1.5MB/1.5MB on-chip I/D L1 cache and 64MB off-chip L2 cache each

rp4440

1, 2 or 4 dual-core PA-8800 900MHz-1GHz with 1.5MB/1.5MB on-chip I/D L1 cache and 32MB off-chip L2 cache each
or
1, 2 or 4 dual-core PA-8900 800MHz-1.1GHz with 1.5MB/1.5MB on-chip I/D L1 cache and 64MB off-chip L2 cache each

It is probably possible to upgrade the CPUs to Itanium 2/IA64 processors.

Chipset

The systems are based on HP’s zx1 chipset, which consists of three main components — the MIO (memory and I/O controller), the IOAs (I/O adapters) and the SMEs (scalable memory expanders):

zx1 MIO (memory and I/O controller) is the main chipset controller and connects the three central system buses:
1. Processor bus (6.4GB/s) for one (rp4410) or two (rp4440) dual-CPU modules
2. Two independent memory buses (each 6.4GB/s)
3. Eight I/O channels (aggregate 4.0GB/s, via the IOAs, see below)
The zx1 MIO also contains both memory and cache controllers.
Six zx1 SMEs (scalable memory expanders) attach to two independent zx1 memory buses (each 6.4GB/s)
Six zx1 IOAs (I/O adapters) connect the PCI-X slots and I/O devices to the zx1 MIO with an aggregate bandwidth of 4.0GB/s on eight 0.5GB/s channels
1. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on two channels — 1.0GB/s
2. PCI-X 64/133 I/O slot on two channels — 1.0GB/s
3. Two PCI-X 64/66 I/O slots on one channel — 0.5GB/s
4. Two PCI-X 64/66 I/O slots on one channel — 0.5GB/s
5. Core I/O adapters (SCSI, Ethernet etc.) on two channels — 1.0GB/s (one channel to dual-port Gigabit Ethernet and Ultra320 SCSI controller, one channel to the management LAN, serial and USB2.0 ports)

The I/O connectivity part of the chipset is made up of standard third-party I/O chips:

Dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller
Dual-port Gigabit Ethernet
USB2.0 controller
IDE controller

An interesting aspect of the rp4400’s bus setup is that the same 6.4GB/s processor bus is shared between up to two CPUs on the rp4410 and up to four CPUs on the rp4440.

» View a system-level illustration (ASCII) of the system/bus architecture.

Buses

Itanium 2/zx1 processor bus 6.4GB/s
Two independent zx1 memory buses, 200MHz, each 6.4GB/s
Eight zx1 I/O channels/buses, aggregate 4.0GB/s
Two PCI-X 64/133 I/O buses
Two PCI-X 64/66 I/O buses
SCSI-3 Ultra320 (LVD) storage I/O bus
IDE secondary storage I/O bus

Memory

PC2100 parity ECC DDR CL2 SDRAM DIMMs
16- or 32-DIMM carrier board
1GB minimum memory
128GB maximum memory
12.8GB/s memory bandwidth
105ns memory latency

Expansion

Two PCI-X 64-bit/133MHz slots (each on an independent bus), hot-plug
Four PCI-X 64-bit/66MHz slot (on two shared buses), hot-plug
All PCI slots are 3.3V

Drives

Two bays for 3.5″ Ultra320 LVD SCSI hard drives, hot-plug
Slimline bay for optional IDE CD or DVD drive

External Connectors

Three DB9 male RS232C serial (local console, remote console, general purpose)
Two USB 2.0 ports
Two Gigabit Ethernet, TP/RJ45
Two Ultra320 SCSI ports
HP Integrated Lights Out (iLO) system management card with Fast-Ethernet Web console

References

User Service Guide HP 9000 rp4410 and HP 9000 rp4440 (PDF) Hewlett-Packard Development Company (April 2007, third edition)
Overview of the HP 9000 rp3410-2, rp3440-4, rp4410-4, and rp4440-8 Servers (PDF, 700KB) Hewlett-Packard (2005)

Operating Systems

HP-UX: 11i v1, v2 or v3 (foundation, enterprise or MCOE or TCOE)
Linux could be a possibility, as the similar rp3400s are supported, albeit unofficially

Benchmarks

Model	SPEC2000, int	SPEC2000, fp	SPEC2000rate, int	SPEC2000rate, fp
rp4440 1GHz dualcore			2-core: 18.6 2-CPU/4-core: 37.0 4-CPU/8-core: 73.2	2-core: 19.3 2-CPU/4-core: 34.7 4-CPU/8-core: 55.4

Compare these with other results on the Benchmarks page.

Physical dimensions/Power

Rack-mounted: 4U height, 440×690 mm width/depth
Vertical stand-alone: 530×261×695 mm height/width/depth
Weight of maximum 51-53kg
Typical power consumption of 836W (rp4410) or 1186W (rp4440)
One or two hot-swap power-supplies (one is standard)

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