Hewlett-Packard Co is to bring forward the release of its forthcoming PA-8600 chip by a quarter, the company told a user group meeting in Chicago yesterday. Attendees of the InterWorks group were told that the 8600, originally scheduled for a mid- 2000 launch, was now expected to ship in systems by the first quarter of 2000. The first parts, however, will have clock speeds of between 500 and 500-MHz. Originally, HP expected the 8600’s base clock speed to be 560-MHz.
New features of the 8600 include new cache algorithms for faster access to data, and cache pre-fetch technology to load data from memory faster. There are also high availability features, including real-time error checking and correcting on the 1.5Mb on-chip cache, and lockstep capabilities enabling systems working in tandem to compare processing steps and recover if errors are detected. Based on the current 8500 core and 0.25 micron process, the part will be used in both workstations and servers.
HP isn’t yet ready to bet its entire future on Intel Corp’s IA-64 line, and it now looks as if the 8600 will beat Merced, the initial IA-64 chip, onto the market. Intel said recently that Merced is scheduled to go into production in mid-2000.
Last year, HP announced that there would be two new iterations of the PA-RISC beyond the previously disclosed 8600 and 8700 parts. The PA 8700, expected to use .18 micron process, isn’t due until 2001, but beyond that on the roadmap is the PA-8800, due before the end of 2003, and the PA-8900, a 1.2-GHz part expected to debut some time in 2004.
