TheHPE Superdome is a high-end server computer designed and manufactured byHewlett Packard Enterprise (formerly Hewlett-Packard). The product's most recent version, "Superdome 2," was released in 2010 supporting 2 to 32 sockets (up to 128 cores) and 4 TB of memory. The Superdome used PA-RISC processors when it debuted in 2000. Since 2002, a second version of the machine based on Itanium 2 processors has been marketed as the HP Integrity Superdome.
The classic PA-RISC Superdome was later renamed HP 9000 Superdome. The HP V-Class was the Superdome's predecessor (which was based on a design acquired from Convex).
TheHP Integrity Superdome 2 uses the Intel Itanium 93xx-series microprocessor, known as "Tukwila", and is redesigned with parts from theHP BladeSystem C7000 enclosure.
Since 2012, Intel Itanium 95xx microprocessor Poulson became available. In 2017, Intel announced that their most recent Itanium chip (code-named Kittson) would be their last Itanium update.[1]
In 2016,Hewlett Packard Enterprise released the Superdome X, which is based onIntelXeon processors, supporting 16 CPU sockets and 24 TB of RAM memory.
Superdome usually runs theHP-UX operating system, although the Itanium 2 version is also compatible with other systems, for example withMicrosoft Windows Server 2008 R2,[2]SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4,[3]Red Hat Enterprise Linux,[4]Debian Wheezy[5] (Long Term Support for it has ended),[6] andOpenVMS V8.2-1.[7][8]
There are 4 different generations of the Superdome:
A building block is acell, a card holding 4 processors and memory. Superdome has accNUMA architecture, which means that processors have shorter access times for their cell's memory but longer access times for other cell's memories, and data items are allowed to be replicated across individual cache memories but are kept coherent with one another bycache coherence hardware mechanisms. In this case, a directory-based coherency mechanism is employed.[9]
A center of each cell is anASIC calledcell controller (CC), that connects to four processor sockets (providing an average of 1.6 GB/s of bandwidth per socket), to four local memory subsystems, and to thebackplane. The CC itself contains acrossbar, and four CCs interconnect via a second-level crossbar. In the maximum machine configuration, four second-level crossbars interconnect with each other, supporting in total 64 processor sockets.
Each socket may hold either a single-core PA-RISC processor (PA-8600 orPA-8700), or a dual-core PA-RISC processor (PA-8800 orPA-8900), a single-core Itanium 2 processor, two Itanium 2 processors (using themx2 module), or one dual-core Itanium 2 processor. There are almost no architectural differences between PA-RISC and Itanium versions of Superdome.
Superdome is not mounted on a standard rack, it is instead shipped as either one or two dedicated cabinets. One cabinet scales to 8 cells, two cabinets at most (16 cells, 16 I/O cages, 192 PCI-X slots). Connection of more than two cabinets was planned, but not implemented.
Each CC connects to one local I/O controller (an SBA), which in turn may connect at most to a singleI/O card cage (also calledI/O chassis) with 12PCI-X slots. A maximum of 192 slots[clarification needed] are possible for the Legacy and SX1000 (16 cells, 16 I/O cages). It is not possible to expand the number of I/O slots for a cell, so if annPar needs more I/O slots, another cell must be added.
Superdome does not contain any internalhard disks, it relies exclusively on externaldisk enclosures.
Superdome supportsnPars (hard partitions), that are granular on the level of a whole cell (and its I/O card cage). This means that a maximum of 16 cells can be part of an nPar.
The Superdome also supports vPars (virtual partitions), granular on a single core level and a single PCI slot level. This means that a top level nPar can house several vPars to better use the hardware in the Superdome.[10]
The architecture of the SX2000 is similar at first glance compared to the SX1000, however it has design differences.
Similarly to both Legacy and SX1000 setups, SX2000 can be:
The currently available options for SX3000 are:
For the SX3000 there are four integrated10 Gbit Ethernet per blade. In addition, a maximum of 96 external PCI-e ports are available. It is unsupported to install anymezzanine cards, although three free slots exist on each blade.[citation needed]
The full line of HP Integrity servers featuring the new Intel Itanium 2 processors is now available with support for HP-UX 11i v2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, OpenVMS and Linux operating systems.
Major new features include: Support for the following Integrity server platforms: HP Integrity rx7620 server; HP Integrity rx8620 server; HP Integrity Superdome server
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