HP Unveils Scalable Chipset to Boost Performance, Bandwidth for HP's McKinley-based Systems

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 25, 2002--Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP - news) today unveiled the HP scalable processor chipset zx1 for HP's McKinley-based workstations and servers at the Intel Developers Forum. The chipset enables HP to offer cost-effective workstations and servers that run applications fast and reliably by taking advantage of the performance of the Intel® Itanium(TM) processor family as it moves to its next generation.

HP's design team was challenged to engineer a way to squeeze the most performance out of a limited number of McKinley CPU processors while balancing cost and systems design flexibility. The result is the HP zx1, a chipset that provides customers with a cost-effective, high bandwidth and low latency solution for 1- to 4-way workstations and servers.

Today's announcement extends HP's strategy to lead the Itanium market with high-performance, cost-effective systems running top applications on Microsoft® Windows®, Linux and HP-UX operating environments.

"Because HP co-developed the Itanium architecture with Intel, our engineers have intimate knowledge of the processor," said Barry Crume, business product manager for Itanium workstations, HP Technical Computing Division. "Using our expertise with multiple operating systems and technical and business applications, we then whittled away the unessential to deliver a chipset that is as lean and powerful as a finely tuned race car."

HP leveraged its technical relationship with Agilent Technologies to implement the physical design of the chipset. Agilent provided application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips in a 0.18um, low-voltage CMOS process that included custom AGP-4X, PCI-X and processor pads, as well as custom datapath logic. The three-chip solution consists of the HP zx1 memory and input/output (I/O) controller, the HP zx1 I/O adapter and an optional HP zx1 scalable memory expander.

"HP's chipset plans are a terrific example of the innovation, excitement and potential around the Itanium processor family and forthcoming McKinley," said Mike Graf, product marketing manager, Intel Itanium processor family. "HP is focusing the chipset efforts on technical workstations and lower-end servers, which, along with other innovative products and technologies, should help expand McKinley's target markets and IT adoption."

The HP zx1 memory and I/O controller interfaces to the McKinley processor bus and provides a low-latency connection to DDR memory either directly or through HP zx1 scalable memory expanders. The HP zx1 I/O adapter chip supports PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus architectures. It provides scalable I/O implementation for a wide variety of systems. The optional HP zx1 scalable memory expander quadruples main memory capacity and increases bandwidth to main memory to 12.8 GBs.

The HP zx1 processor chipset features an optimized DDR interface that provides the low latency and high bandwidth to memory required by the next generation of Intel Itanium processor family CPUs.

More information on the HP scalable processor chipset zx1 is available at http://www.hp.com/go/itanium

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to all. HP had total revenue of $45.2 billion in its 2001 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries and are used under license. HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products. UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended Oct. 31, 2000, and subsequently filed reports. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP's results could differ materially from HP's expectations in these statements. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

     HP
     Mark Armstrong, 208/396-4309
     marmstrong@hp.com
      or
     Weber Shandwick for HP
     Annie Gladue, 510/908-3292
     agladue@webershandwick.com