Concept
The DEC 7000 AXP and DEC 10000 AXP are a series of high-end multiprocessor server computers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, introduced on 10 November 1992 (although the DEC 10000 AXP was not available until the following year). These systems formed part of the first generation of systems based on the 64-bit Alpha AXP architecture and at the time of introduction, ran Digital's OpenVMS AXP operating system, with DEC OSF/1 AXP available in March 1993. They were designed in parallel with the VAX 7000 and VAX 10000 minicomputers, and are identical except for the processor module(s) and supported bus interfaces. A field upgrade from a VAX 7000/10000 to a DEC 7000/10000 AXP was possible by means of swapping the processor boards. The DEC 7000/10000 AXP were intended to supersede the VAX 6000 series, and themselves were succeeded in 1995 by the AlphaServer 8200 and 8400 (TurboLaser) enterprise servers. The DEC 7000 AXP was positioned as a data center system, whereas the DEC 10000 AXP was positioned as a "mainframe" system. From a hardware point of view, the DEC 10000 AXP was essentially a larger configuration of the DEC 7000 AXP. Both shared the same System Cabinet, but the DEC 10000 AXP was configured as standard with one Expander Cabinet housing storage devices, and one Battery Cabinet housing an uninterruptible power supply. These were optional for a DEC 7000 AXP system. There are two models of the DEC 7000 AXP: Model 6x0, code-named Laser/Ruby: 182 MHz DECchip 21064 (EV4) processor(s) and when introduced, the base price was US126,300. It was discontinued on 10 June 1995 and on 31 December 1995 for Europe. Upgrades were offered for an additional year after discontinuation. Model 7x0, code-named Laser/Ruby45: 275 MHz DECchip 21064A (EV45) processor(s). This model was introduced on 3 November 1994.