The high-end scalability of the HP 9000 Superdome–with PA-8800 and new PA-8900 processors-provides customers with more than twice the compute power in the same system compared with the previous–generation HP 9000 Superdome. This enables a much higher level of server consolidation: more power in each partition means additional lower-power servers can be consolidated, for increased cost savings and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

In addition, the power and scalability of the HP 9000 Superdome mean that it can handle both planned and unexpected growth in high-end compute loads exceptionally well. For existing HP 9000 Superdome customers, this new level of performance can be achieved through in-box upgrades to the PA-8900 processor, bringing significant improvements to IT capabilities at an incremental cost. You can upgrade an existing HP 9000 Superdome to a PA-8900-powered HP 9000 Superdome simply by

1. removing the PA-8600, PA-8700, PA-8700+, or PA-8800 cell boards and
   transferring the memory to new PA-8900-based cell boards;
2. plugging the new PA-8900 cell boards back into the cabinet;
3. updating the software; and
4. resuming operations.

The HP 9000 Superdome is built to deliver unprecedented levels of high availability through such features as redundant and hot-swappable fans and power supplies, the online addition and replacement of PCI-X I/O cards, and dynamic processor and memory de-allocation.

HP 9000 servers are the ideal stepping stone to HP Integrity servers and Itanium®-based computing. When you're ready to move to the next level of computing performance, the same chassis can be upgraded with Intel® Itanium® processors (via swapping of cell boards). HP Integrity servers offer new degrees of performance, flexibility in operating-system choice, application support, and services. That means as your performance needs grow, you can continue to enjoy the world-class investment protection of your HP 9000 server as you move to the industry-leading performance of the HP Integrity platform&ndashat an affordable, incremental cost. On top of this, HP supports mixed Intel Itanium/PA-RISC architecture environments by the end of 2005 in the Superdome server. PA-8900 processors will be able to coexist with Intel Itanium 2 processors in the same cabinet but in separate partitions.