MPE/iX Release 6.5 Supports >3.75 GBs of Memory--Dave Snow, Hewlett-Packard

With the March 2000 shipment of MPE/iX Release 6.5, HP e3000 Servers now
support greater than 3.75 GBs of main memory.  This is good news for many
applications for which memory sizes limited the number of users that could
be supported or for which had the application's performance was limited by
the 3.75 GB maximum memory size.   However, since the MPE/iX Release 6.5
Communicator only indicates that "some" HP e3000 Servers will benefit form
this increase, clarifications need to be given as to which HP e3000 Servers
will actually benefit from this maximum memory size increase.

HP e3000 Ordering Menus for adding HP e3000 memory used by HP sales people
and by HP e3000 Authorized Resellers already note these limitations.

Only HP e3000 Servers that use the PA8000 or PA8200 processor chips (the
PA-RISC 64 bit chips) with MPE/iX Release 6.5 will be able to use memory
sizes greater than 3.75 GBs.  This includes a number of 9x9KS Servers (the
929KS/030, 939KS/030, 979KS, 989KS/x00 and 989KS/x50 Servers) and the 997
Servers.

A number of HP e3000 Servers based on PA7xxx processor chips (the PA-RISC 32
bit chips) can still use Release 6.5 and many of its added new features
(e.g. WebServer software, file sizes up to 128 GBs, up to 511 disk spindles,
etc.).  However these PA7xxx processor based servers will not be able to
support memory sizes greater than 3.75 GBs.  These include the 9x7, 9x8,
939KS, 929KS/020, 939KS/020, 959KS, 969KS/x00, 969KS/x20, 992/990, 995/991
and 996 Servers.

For those HP e3000 9x9KS Servers that do support greater than 3.75 GB of
memory, the upper limit is now 8 GB with MPE/iX Release 6.5.  To achieve
these large memory sizes, customers should consider using the 9x9KS 512 MB
memory modules, which can be intermixed with the smaller 9x9KS memory
modules.

For the HP e3000 997 Servers, the upper limit is now 16 GB with MPE/iX
Release 6.5.  To achieve these large memory sizes, customers should consider
using one or two 8 GB memory carrier cards.  This 8 GB memory carrier card
can support from one to eight 1 GB memory modules.  The 8 GB memory carrier
card can be field installed and can be intermixed with the 128 MB (not
actively sold), 256 MB, 512 MB and 768 MB HP e3000 997 memory array boards.
However, since there are a limited number of slots for plugging memory into
the 997 Server, some smaller memory array cards may need to be removed to
support large processor and large memory configurations.

Previous communications (e.g., the Spring 2000 HP e3000 Advisor) to
end-users have noted that sales of some 99x memory products (the 256 MB, 512
MB and 768 MB memory arrays) will be discontinued as of August 1, 2000.  HP
e3000 996/995/992/991/990 customers will need to buy any required additional
HP supported memory prior to August 1, 2000.  HP e3000 997 customers using
MPE/iX Release 6.0 Express 1 or 6.5 will be able to continue to purchase the
8 GB memory carrier board after August 1, 2000 (although Release 6.0 Express
1 customers are limited to using only the first 3.75 GB of any loaded
memory).

So in summary, many HP e3000 applications will see added performance or
greater numbers of users using larger memory configurations (please check
with your application providers for details).  However, greater than 3.75 GB
memory configurations are limited to PA8000 and PA8200 based servers
(929KS/030, 939KS/030, 979KS, 989KS/x00, 989KS/x50 Servers and the 997
Servers) using MPE/iX Release 6.5.