HP 3000

The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1973. It was designed to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with time-sharing. The first models were withdrawn from the market until speed improvements could be made. It ultimately became known as a reliable and powerful business system. Early models had large cabinets with front panels, while later models were made that fit into desks using only terminal consoles for diagnostics, with bootstrap routines in ROM. Models ranged from a system sometimes used by a single user, to models that supported over two thousand users.

It was one of the last proprietary minicomputer systems to be retired by its vendor, outlasting the PDP-11-descended Digital Equipment Corporation VAX, which was acquired by Compaq and then ultimately by Hewlett-Packard. After almost 30 years, a five-year phase-out period for the now-named e3000 series servers was announced in November 2001. HP extended this period twice. No more new e3000s are being sold, although used systems continue to be sold for upgrades on a third-party reseller market. Support from the vendor to customers for the HP 3000 continues through Dec. 31, 2010. Many third party firms are supporting the system for customers through the year 2013 and beyond. Some customers continue to use the HP 3000 in companies worldwide, especially in manufacturing and e-commerce industries, while others have migrated to business server systems made by HP and others.

Classic memory segments and 64K barrier

Code (reentrant) and data reside in separate variable-length segments, which are 32,768 "halfwords" (16-bit words) (or, 65,536 bytes). The operating system, known as MPE (for Multi-Programming Executive), loads code segments from program files and segmented Library (SL) files as needed, up to 256 segments in one process.

There could be as much as 64KB of memory in a code segment, but calling a routine was based on segment number and routine number within a segment, so a program could theoretically have about 32,385 routines. This was compared to most 16 bit computers that had 64KB of address space for everything. The bigger limitation was the data segment and stack segment, which were also 64KB. Shared library routines did not permit cross-process global data since each process had its own data segment. Some procedures worked around this by requiring the caller to pass in an array from their own stack or data segment to hold all state information, similar to modern object oriented languages where methods are applied to objects passed in allocated by the caller.

A process could allocate and use multiple extra data segments (XDS) of up to 64KB each. While the Classic architecture imposed a limit of 65,535 extra data segments system-wide, other limitations would usually restrict that to a somewhat smaller limit.

Systems programming was done in SPL (System Programming Language), an ALGOL-like language, but allowing inline assembler, and other direct access to the ISA. The standard terminals for the HP 3000 were the HP 2640 series, which supported block mode data entry from forms, as well as character mode.

Classic and PA-RISC XL

The HP 3000 family was divided into the "Classic" (16-bit) and "XL" (later IX - 32-bit) families following the introduction of systems based on HP's PA-RISC chips in early 1984. These were not binary compatible with the Classics, but would transparently run Classic code via an emulator integrated into the MPE XL operating system. (Classic code could optionally be translated to native PA-RISC code via OCTCOMP, the Object Code Translator/COMPiler ... such code ran at native speed, but was still subject to Classic stack and memory size limitations).

The earlier "Classic" machines were based on a custom CISC processor. From about 1988 HP 3000s using PA-RISC processors began shipping in volume and, by 1995, effectively displaced the older family of machines from use although, as with all technology shifts, there remained a significant residue of older machines in service.

The PA-RISC based HP 3000's operating system was written primarily in Modcal, HP's extended version of Pascal. Large portions of the earlier MPE V operating system, written in SPL, are still used as part of MPE XL and MPE/iX on PA-RISC. A few subsystems (e.g., TurboIMAGE) are written in PSPL (Portable SPL). A small portion of MPE XL and MPE/iX is written in PA-RISC assembly language.

The 3000 series operating system was originally styled the Multi-Programming Executive, MPE (later called MPE XL and then, after POSIX compliance was added in versions 5.0-5.5, MPE/iX). Early versions had a fairly primitive command line interpreter, with a three-level hierarchical file system, and utilities such as compilers would resemble "run fortran.pub.sys" rather than allowing programs to be run as keyword commands. People who used the HP 3000 would notice that machines were fairly reliable compared to other minicomputers of the time.

Part of the tremendous success of the HP 3000 was due to the provision of, with brief exceptions included as part of the Fundamental Operating System (FOS), a vendor developed shallow network database management system (DBMS) called IMAGE (now called TurboIMAGE) that was reputedly inspired by (if not actually based upon) the TOTAL DBMS developed by Cincom Systems, Inc. Including IMAGE with the server created an ecosystem of applications and development utilities that could rely upon IMAGE as a data repository in any HP 3000. Almost uniquely in computer history, it remains a feature of MPE that forward binary compatibility of executable programs is preserved across all systems and all versions of the operating system, regardless of hardware architecture. Programs that ran on the original Series II in 1973 can be reloaded from tape onto the last N-Series machines produced in 2003 and run today without recompiling.

As the enterprise computing market shifted towards standardized Unix systems, which HP had also been promoting, in November 2001, Hewlett-Packard announced that its end-of-life for the HP 3000 would be the end of 2006, and that no new systems would be sold after 2003. In early 2006, Hewlett-Packard announced that limited vendor support for the HP 3000 would be extended by two years for certain clients or geographic regions. In September 2007, HP once more extended its support for the systems, offering Mature Product Support without Sustaining Engineering (creation of software patches). This has been one of the longest lifetimes for a proprietary minicomputer system. The computers would outlast the highly regarded PDP-11 and VAX series, although OpenVMS operating system is still being offered on Alpha- and IA-64-based systems as Hewlett Packard products.

Use of stack instead of registers

Most current computer instruction sets are based on a general purpose register model. The processor and memory architecture of the classic HP 3000 were based on a stack machine model, like HP's well-known line of RPN calculators. It was said to be inspired by the famous stack-based Burroughs large systems. Rather than having a small number of registers, for example only an AX and BX register in the case of the HP 1000, operands would be pushed on the same stack used to store local variables and return addresses. So rather than

LOAD AX, 0X0001
LOAD BX, 0X0002
ADD AX, BX

you would have

LDI 1
LDI 2
ADD

The 16-bit microcoded machines (Series I, II, III, 30, 33, 39, 40, 42, 44, 48, 52, 58, 64, 68, 70, 37, ...) implement a 16-bit word addressed, byte-addressable, segmented, Harvard, Stack Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Most of the ~214 instructions are 16 bits wide. Stack operations pack 2 per 16-bit word and the remaining few are 32 bits wide.

CISC Implementations

• III: 4 Top of stack registers, 175nS microinstruction cycle time → 5.7 MHz
• 30, 33: Silicon on sapphire, 2 Top of stack registers, 90nS microinstruction cycle time → 11 MHz, instructions take 3-7 cycles
• 40, 42, 44, 48: Schottky TTL, 4 Top of stack registers, 105nS microinstruction cycle time → 9.5 MHz
• 64, 68: ECL, 8 Top of Stack registers, 75nS microinstruction cycle time → 13 MHz, 8KB cache, 60KB WCS, 2 16-bit ALUs
• 37: ~8,000-gate CMOS gate array, 4 Top of Stack registers

Later 32-bit models used HP's PA-RISC general register-based RISC architecture.

PA-RISC Implementations

• PA-RISC 1.0 Series 925, 930, 935, 949, 950, 955, 960, 980
• PA-RISC 1.1 Series 917, 920, 922, 927, 937, 947, 948, 957, 958, 967, 977sx, 987, 990, 991, 992, 995, 918, 928, 968, 978, 988
• PA-RISC 2.0 Series 996, A and N class and the 9x9 series

HP3000 Support and Encryption

Although the HP3000 is becoming highly antiquated, there is still a lot of demand for HP3000 services and support. PCI is becoming essential for any business still using the HP3000. Encryption of the database, and flat file encryption are burning issues with PCI compliance becoming a hot topic. There are currently very few, if only one option available out there. Fluent Edge Technologies, Inc. based out of Coeur d' Alene, ID offers a comprehensive encryption solution for the HP3000. Since the HP3000 was born in the 80's, there was no need for any PCI compliance. In today's modern age, it is essential that the HP3000 secure sensitive information properly.

See also

• HP 9000, HP Integrity, HP Superdome
• Stromasys (plans to develop an HP 3000 emulator)

References

• Hewlett Package: HP3000 Computer Systems: General Information Manual; August 1983; 5953-7553

External links

• Fluent Edge Technologies, Inc. HP3000 Encryption [1]
• Edler, C The Rise, Fall and Rise of the HP 3000 - more early history.
• HP3000 FAQ
• The 3000 NewsWire news blog for HP3000 news, archives
• Bitsavers has PDF scans of HP 3000 hardware and software manuals - but use a mirror site.
• Printing HP3000 MPE/iX to Windows printing software.
• HP Computer Museum also has PDF scans of manuals.
• HP 3000 General Information Manual Sep 79, Oct 1984
• HP 3000 Performance (text file)
• "HP SYSTEM/3000 system description" promotional material Nov 1971
• November 19, 2001: HP Sunsets Its Proprietary e3000 Server Line
• November 14, 2001 Hewlett-Packard phases out server line, the line will be phased out over a five-year period
• hp.com: HP is committed to continued support of HP e3000 installations
• HP e3000 transition program FAQ
• Classic Genealogy and PA-RISC Systems Performance Spreadsheets

Pictures

• Picture of HP 3000