The Museum of HP Calculators

HP Forum Archive 21

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

HP Coprocessors
Message #1 Posted by John W Kercheval on 16 May 2012, 3:38 p.m.

Anyone do any work with coprocessing HP machines of any kind?

      
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #2 Posted by Jean-Michel on 16 May 2012, 4:18 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by John W Kercheval

Hello John,

is an HP Z400 workstation the kind of "coprocessing machine" you're talking of? If so, then I can tell you I work with such a computer every day. Among others, I use a 3D CAD software and an FEA software.

Hope this helps. Kind regards. J.M.

            
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #3 Posted by John W Kercheval on 16 May 2012, 4:29 p.m.,
in response to message #2 by Jean-Michel

Yes that is what I was talking about. How doe that work with your P?

THANKS!

                  
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #4 Posted by Jean-Michel on 16 May 2012, 4:41 p.m.,
in response to message #3 by John W Kercheval

That works just fine.
I can open as much windows as needed and have several tasks running at the same time. A chance: these machine are dedicated to this kind of tasks!
May I ask you why you ask this question? Do you have a specific problem with such a computer?
Regards.
JM

                        
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #5 Posted by John W Kercheval on 16 May 2012, 4:47 p.m.,
in response to message #4 by Jean-Michel

No just heard of this before. Was wondering who used it & how it was used.

JK

                              
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #6 Posted by David Ramsey on 17 May 2012, 12:52 a.m.,
in response to message #5 by John W Kercheval

They are nice enough machines, but there's nothing magic or special about them. They're standard Xeon workstation computers running ECC memory and Windows 7.

                                    
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #7 Posted by Donald Ingram on 17 May 2012, 1:31 a.m.,
in response to message #6 by David Ramsey

The Z820 line now has some dual 8 core Xeon ( E5 Sandy Bridge ) processor options.

If that is not enough, there are also some pretty amazing GPU coprocessors which can make some parallel computing tasks such as FDTD a lot more practical if the model can be split into many small elements.

e.g. EMpro FDTD GPU acceleration

Such software can use either a high end graphics card or something like the Nvidia Tesla GPU which gives you 484 cores and claims 515 Gflops

I've been looking as I think I can now justify such a beast at work - fingers crossed.

Edited: 17 May 2012, 1:36 a.m.

                                    
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #8 Posted by Les Bell on 17 May 2012, 1:36 a.m.,
in response to message #6 by David Ramsey

Quote:
They are nice enough machines, but there's nothing magic or special about them. They're standard Xeon workstation computers running ECC memory and Windows 7.

I'm not getting it, either. What's "coprocessor" about this machine? It just looks like a standard Intel quad-core processor box, to me. Nothing special, architecturally speaking.

I suppose you could trick it out with multiple nVidia GPU's, but then, you can do that with any white-box machine.

Best,

--- Les
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]

      
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #9 Posted by Olivier De Smet on 17 May 2012, 11:20 a.m.,
in response to message #1 by John W Kercheval

For nice HP coprocessor, try an HP98635 floating point math card for HP9000 series 200, it can speed up basic x3 and pascal x7 :)

I don't have this machine (I regret it ...) but you can try this Emulator

Olivier

P.S. it's not a real HP hardware, it use a national 16081 fpu, 68881 were not widely available at this time :)

Edited: 17 May 2012, 11:26 a.m.

            
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #10 Posted by Gerry Schultz on 17 May 2012, 1:23 p.m.,
in response to message #9 by Olivier De Smet

Hey, you want to see a sexy HP workstation, go look at the HP Z1. I saw one open at NAB in the HP booth. It's got a full graphics card yet it's like a large iMac with everything behind the screen. You can open it up and have full access to all the hardware unlike the iMac. We also use a couple of dozen Z800s for Harris Velocity hardware platforms. They are great machines.

Gerry

                  
Re: HP Coprocessors
Message #11 Posted by Olivier De Smet on 17 May 2012, 3:50 p.m.,
in response to message #10 by Gerry Schultz

Nothing new, as integrated system, I make my phd on a sparcstation ELC :)

For nice hardware try a SGI Octane:

Weight a ton, had one of the best audio subsystem I know and best of all don't have a bus for ultimate performances (use gold platted press-contacts for IO)

But its old hardware ...

Olivier

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

Go back to the main exhibit hall