Серверы HPE Integrity: История и Архитектура

Series of server computers

HPE Integrity Servers is a series of server computers produced by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (formerly Hewlett Packard) since 2003, based on the Itanium processor. The Integrity brand name was inherited by HP from Tandem Computers via Compaq. In 2015, HP released the Superdome X line of Integrity Servers based on the x86 Architecture. It is a 'small' Box holding up to 8 dual Socket Blades and supporting up to 16 processors/240 cores (when populated with Intel Xeon E7 2890 or E7 2880 Processors).

Over the years, Integrity systems have supported Windows Server, HP UX 11i, OpenVMS, NonStop, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems on Integrity servers. As of 2020, the operating systems that are supported are HP UX 11i, OpenVMS and NonStop. Early Integrity servers were based on two closely related chipsets. The zx1 chipset supported up to 4 CPUs and up to 8 PCI X busses. They consisted of three distinct application specific integrated circuits; a memory and I/O controller, a scalable memory adapter and an I/O adapter. The PA 8800 and PA 8900 microprocessors use the same bus as the Itanium 2 processors, allowing HP to also use this chipset for the HP 9000 servers and C8000 workstations. The memory and I/O controller can be attached directly to up to 12 DDR SDRAM slots. If more slots than this are needed, two scalable memory adapters can be attached instead, allowing up to 48 memory slots. The chipset supports DIMM sizes up to 4 GB, theoretically allowing a machine to support up to 192 GB of RAM, although the largest supported configuration was 128 GB. The sx1000 chipset supported up to 64 CPUs and up to 192 PCI X buses. The successor chipsets were the zx2 and sx2000 respectively.

The 7U rx4610 utilizes Itanium 1 CPUs with support for up to four single core CPUs, 64GB RAM and 10 PCI 64 bit slots. The 4U rx4640 utilizes Itanium 2 CPUs with support for up to four dual core CPUs, 128 GB RAM and 6 PCI X slots. Both of these models come with integrated USB and video as default, which enables support for Microsoft Windows operating systems. The rx4640 is architecturally the same box as the rp4440, and can be changed from PA RISC to Itanium 2 support with the flip of a switch.

The discontinued 7U rx5670 server has four CPU sockets which support McKinley and Madison processors. It is zx1 based and can have up to 48 DIMM slots, supporting 256 MB to 2 GB DIMMs which must be loaded in matched sets of four (quads). It has 9 PCI X slots and 1 PCI slot available.

HP's mid range and high end (Superdome) servers are based on cell boards, sometimes called cells, which contain the chipset, Processors, memory, and I/O bus. This design allows the servers to be divided into hardware partitions, or groups of cell boards. Each partition is able to perform as if it were a separate server.

The Superdome server is available in several models, including the SD 16, SD 32, and SD 64. HP announced Superdome 2 in April 2010, offering resiliency improvements, a modular, bladed design, common components and crossbar fabric that routes transactions to the optimal pathway between blades and I/O. Superdome 2 addresses requirements for high performance computing by providing flexible scalability and fault tolerance necessary for mission critical workloads. In November 2011 HP announced Project Odyssey, a development roadmap to unify server architectures on a single platform. The roadmap includes blades with Intel Xeon processors for the HP Superdome 2 enclosure (code named DragonHawk) and the scalable c Class blade enclosures (code named HydraLynx), while supporting Windows and Linux environments with features from HP UX within the next two years.