News release

NASA Using HP Supercomputer for Advanced Environmental Research

CSC Managing 3.2 TeraOPS AlphaServer Supercomputer at Goddard Space Flight Center

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 17, 2002

HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is using a powerful HP AlphaServer supercomputer for climate research studies into environmental issues such as global warming.

Information technology services firm Computer Sciences Corporation installed the HP AlphaServer SC45 supercomputer at the NASA Center for Computational Sciences at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in the first stage of a two-year NASA contract. The AlphaServer system, running the Tru64 UNIX operating system, includes more than 500 Alpha 1-gigahertz processors.

This fall, the AlphaServer supercomputer will be expanded to more than 1,300 processors with the addition of more than 800 1.25 GHz Alpha processors. When fully deployed, the AlphaServer SC45 system will deliver peak performance of 3.2 TeraOPS (trillions of operations per second). The SC45 supercomputer will use 8 terabytes of HP StorageWorks fibre-channel based storage. HP Services will provide services to support the entire installation to ensure the highest levels of system availability.

In addition, a 32-processor HP AlphaServer SC45 system has been installed by CSC at Columbia University in New York and is being used for complementary environmental research at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

The environmental research project contract, which is valued at $17.5 million, represents the initial milestone in a six-year NASA plan to provide integrated high-end computing resources that will support NASA's Earth and space science research community.

The announcement further strengthens HP's position as the leader in the high-performance technical computing marketplace. According to industry research group International Data Corp., the combined market share of HP and Compaq represented 41.5 percent of the $5.06 billion high-performance computing market in 2001.⁽¹⁾

The HP supercomputer was chosen by NASA following a comprehensive competitive proposal review that included a number of benchmark tests, featuring the Aries atmospheric modeling and Poseidon oceanic modeling codes. The HP AlphaServer SC45 system produced the largest guaranteed throughput measurement in both tests. The HP system will replace several Cray supercomputers, including a Cray T3E system which NASA has been using since 1997.

"HP's high-performance technical computing enables scientists to conduct breakthrough research," said Rich Marcello, vice president and general manager, HP Alpha Systems Division. "NASA's choice of HP supercomputer technology for its vital environmental research studies attests to our industry-leading position in delivering large-scale computational solutions."

"NASA scientists sought to improve their climate modeling and simulation capabilities," said Bob Scudamore, vice president, CSC High Performance Computing Center of Excellence. "This objective drove the requirements for greater computational power, memory and data storage. With this new technology in place, NASA scientists will be better able to understand the Earth's systems and improve our predictions of climate, weather and natural hazards."

HP AlphaServer SC45

The AlphaServer SC45 supercomputer can scale to thousands of Alpha processors delivering multiple TFLOPS (trillions of operations per second) performance to meet the most demanding compute-intensive research projects.

One of the customers that has purchased the AlphaServer system is the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, which is using more than 3,000 Alpha processors for the world's largest non-military supercomputer used for open research.

Other large AlphaServer supercomputers are being used by the French Atomic Energy Commission, which has the largest supercomputer in Europe, and the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing, which has the largest university supercomputer in Australia.

HP also is building a 30+ TeraOPS AlphaServer system for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration to simulate nuclear testing.

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 with 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⁾ IDC, Worldwide High Performance Technical Computing Census, 2001.

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.