News release

HP Ranks "Best in Class" in Latest IDC High-performance Computing Benchmark

HP Receives Top Honors in Two Out of Four Categories; Places Three Systems in Top Five Positions in Third Category

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 5, 2002

HP (NYSE: HPQ) today announced that its server products achieved top honors in two out of four categories of the most recent IDC Balanced Rating, a new standardized evaluation for computer systems running supercomputer applications. In a third category, HP placed three systems in the top five positions.

The IDC Balanced Rating test is conducted by IDC, the world's leading provider of IT analysis and market data, with extensive input from the high-performance computing ( HP C) community. The rankings reflect a comprehensive evaluation of the overall capabilities of computers in three critical areas of performance: processor performance, memory system capability and scaling capability.

"Using the new IDC approach to comparing HP C computers, HP products won the top positions in two of the four IDC segments -- Divisional and Departmental," said Earl Joseph II, research director, worldwide systems and servers, IDC. "With these segments representing the majority of technical computing market revenues, HP is once again demonstrating its commitment to delivering competitive products to its customers."

"The IDC Balanced Rating is an unbiased ranking by experts in the field of high-performance technical computing -- providing a service much like Consumer Reports, but for the technical computing customer," said Steve Joachims, marketing manager, HP High Performance Technical Computing Division. "The rankings of products in this latest report will match what many users will see when running a wide range of computationally intensive workloads.

"The fact that HP dominates competitors in three categories demonstrates not only the superiority of our current products, but also HP's commitment to delivering solutions which span the technical computing market from top to bottom."

The latest rankings list 893 currently installed HP C systems in four buyer segments:

• Technical Capability Computers -- Systems purchased to solve the most demanding problems
• Technical Enterprise Computers -- Capacity systems sold for $1 million or more
• Technical Divisional Computers -- Capacity systems sold from $250,000 to 999,000
• Technical Departmental Computers -- Capacity systems sold for less than $250,000

The Terascale Computing System, an HP AlphaServer SC45 supercomputer with more than 3,000 processors, was installed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center last October with support from the National Science Foundation. It is the most powerful system in the United States committed to unclassified research.

"This system, brought into being through our relationship with HP, enables researchers at U.S. universities to attack the most challenging problems in engineering and science," said Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies, scientific directors, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. "Researchers have flocked to use this machine, and already in its short lifetime, it has made possible new work in several fields, including storm modeling and new understanding of an important protein family."

About HP

HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP merged with Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. The merged company had combined revenue of approximately $81.7 billion in fiscal 2001 and operations in more than 160 countries. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.