News release

HP Announces Portfolio of Itanium 2-based Systems, Solutions and Services

New Offerings Deliver Optimal Customer Value with Breakthrough Performance and Price

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 8, 2002

HP (NYSE: HPQ) today announced the worldwide roll out of an extensive portfolio of Intel® Itanium® 2-based systems, integrated solutions and comprehensive services. With this launch, HP delivers the industry's broadest offering of Intel Itanium 2-based servers and workstations featuring breakthrough price and performance for HP-UX, Microsoft® Windows® and Linux environments.

"Our customers win today as HP's Itanium 2-based solutions deliver unmatched value," said Peter Blackmore, executive vice president, HP Enterprise Systems Group. "Customers get maximized business computing power with the benefits of breakthrough performance and scalability at a low cost. With HP's unparalleled expertise and comprehensive services, customers can quickly and seamlessly incorporate Itanium 2-based systems into their environments. In addition, with HP, the path for future growth is clear and customers' IT investments are protected."

"Our joint effort with HP has delivered an exceptional architecture and products that will deliver the scalability, reliability, investment protection and absolute performance for the most demanding enterprise needs," said Mike Fister, senior vice president and general manager, Intel Enterprise Platforms Group. "HP has developed a comprehensive portfolio of Itanium 2-based products complete with chipsets, a choice of operating systems, software and a broad family of server and workstation models that bolster Intel's efforts in this demanding market segment."

Nearly seven years of collaboration among industry leaders HP, Intel and Microsoft have led to an enterprise-ready Itanium 2-based ecosystem, underscoring the companies' long-standing commitment to the Itanium architecture.

"Microsoft consistently delivers affordable, scalable systems that reliably extend customers' server ecosystems and build on those investments," said Cliff Reeves, vice president, Windows division, Microsoft Corporation. "Working with HP and Intel, Microsoft is demonstrating that HP's Itanium 2-based systems running 64-bit Windows and SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) produce record-breaking performance. We will continue extending Windows' enterprise capabilities, thereby offering customers unsurpassed price/performance to tackle highly dynamic, complex workloads."

Enabled by the high-bandwidth, low-latency HP Chipset zx1, HP's new systems deliver record-breaking performance benchmarks that address customers' most complex and data-intensive workloads at better prices and performance than comparable RISC platforms.

HP's new Itanium 2-based systems include:

• HP Workstation zx2000, the industry's first Itanium 2-based 900 MHz uni-processor workstation with 2D and 3D AGP graphics and the industry's best floating point performance, priced similarly to an IA-32 workstation starting at an estimated U.S. street price of $4,500.

• HP Workstation zx6000, with the industry's most flexible and scalable redeployment options for a uni- or dual-processor 900 or 1 GHz workstation with 2D and 3D AGP graphics, starting at an estimated U.S. street price of $6,400.

• HP Server rx2600, supporting up to 2 processors, 900 MHz and 1 GHz with extraordinary compute density for excellent cluster-based computing, starting at an estimated U.S. price of $7,300.

• HP Server rx5670, a four-way entry-level server, supporting up to 4 processors, 900 MHz and 1 GHz, offering the world's only in-box upgrades to the Intel Itanium architecture from an existing RISC server, starting at an estimated U.S. street price of $23,400.⁽¹⁾

Lifecycle Services

HP's lifecycle services enable customers to quickly integrate the Itanium architecture into their IT infrastructure with rapid deployment, support and the peak performance of HP's Itanium 2-based systems. The new services include planning, porting and migration, implementation, support and education to provide a smooth transition to HP's Itanium 2-based systems.

HP customers such as Johns Hopkins University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) said these offerings will strengthen their current and long-term investments in HP's Itanium 2-based systems as they work on issues requiring scalable, advanced computing power.

The Johns Hopkins University Sloan Digital Sky Survey project has been expanding its database catalog to about 300 million celestial objects. The positive effects of large memory support and increased processing power were seen very clearly in the first generation Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition Itanium-based server, according to the university.

"With HP's Itanium-based systems running Windows, configured with 28 GB of memory, we were able to perform calculations in 10 days that previously would have taken half a year. During testing, the 64-bit Itanium-based server processed data at 350 MB per second, which was astounding," said Alex Szalay, Alumni Centennial Professor, Johns Hopkins University. "Johns Hopkins is looking forward to even more amazing performance from the Itanium 2-based systems from HP running on Windows. We're considering porting our entire database to these next-generation servers."

"Using the Itanium architecture, HP's engineers worked closely with PNNL to apply computational science to key scientific challenges," said David Dixon, associate director for theory, modeling and simulation at the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy scientific user facility at PNNL. "With the advanced processing power and peak performance delivered by the Itanium 2 processor and HP's world-class services and support, PNNL will have one of the fastest and most powerful supercomputers in the world to address increasingly complex biological and environmental problems."

The HP and Intel Solution Centers located in Grenoble, France, and Cupertino, Calif., provide customers access to HP and Intel expertise and now offer a broad range of Itanium 2-based systems and a complete Internet data center environment to facilitate easy integration into their existing architectures.

In addition, HP and Intel are creating Itanium 2-based development reference platforms, consisting of HP's Itanium 2-based servers and software development tools for ISVs developing HP-UX, Windows and Linux applications. The expanded solution centers and reference platform give customers the immediate benefit of high-quality Itanium-based solutions that can be quickly implemented.

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 completed its merger transaction involving Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. The company would have had combined revenue on a pro forma basis giving effect to the Compaq transaction of approximately $81.1 billion in fiscal 2001 and operations in more than 160 countries. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ Actual prices on all products included here may vary.

For more customer and partner testimonials, please visit http://www.hp.com/go/itanium.

Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products.

UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group.

Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HP's annual report on Form 10-K, as amended on January 30, 2002, for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2001, HP's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2002 (as filed with the SEC on March 12, 2002) and subsequently filed reports. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP's results could differ materially from HP's expectations in these statements. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.