press release

California Institute of Technology Selects HP Itanium 2 Systems for Scientific Research on TeraGrid Project

HP Continues to Drive Industry-wide Adoption of Its Itanium 2-based Servers

HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that the California Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) has installed HP Itanium® 2-based servers running on Linux as part of its 32-node cluster dedicated to data intensive applications on the TeraGrid project, the world's largest, fastest, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research.

As the focal point for research in computational science and engineering at the California Institute of Technology, CACR turned to HP's dual-processor clustered rx2600 Itanium® 2-based servers to provide an infrastructure that can easily adapt to its fast-evolving computing needs.

"We rely on continuous performance improvements to advance the sophistication of our simulations and maintain a rapid research pace," said James C.T. Pool, executive director, CACR. "HP has been providing CACR with reliable, high-performance systems for years. We have performed initial testing with NAS Parallel Benchmarks, High Performance Linpack, Pallas MPI Benchmarks, and local applications stressing computational and data intensive aspects of the HP cluster. We are pleased with the results to date."

CACR will employ 17 Itanium 2-based servers to provide the performance and stability required to run data-intensive applications, perform scientific simulations and move large volumes of data across the network in real time for the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project.

The TeraGrid is an $88 million project funded by the NSF and will allow researchers across the United States to more quickly analyze, simulate and help solve some of the most complex scientific problems such as molecular modeling for disease detection, drug discovery, automobile crash simulations and research on alternative energy sources.

Enabled by the Intel® Itanium 2 processor and the high-bandwidth, low-latency HP Chipset zx1, the HP servers will connect to a collection of high-performance computers at five labs,⁽¹⁾ creating a giant virtual computer accessible from any point on the TeraGrid. The system is expected to be operational by July.

"We are extremely pleased to expand our relationship with CACR. Not only does it speak to the strength of HP's Itanium-based solutions, but it also underlines our commitment to the technical computing space," said Winston Prather, vice president, high performance technical computing, HP Enterprise Systems Group. "Today's announcement is further testimony of the increasing number of organizations that are choosing Itanium-based servers for their high-performance computing needs."

CACR also is using eight single-processor HP zx2000 Itanium 2-based workstations for the development of earth sciences applications and parallel visualization software.

HP has been supplying high-performance systems to CACR for several years, including an HP Superdome server running HP-UX being used for scientific research.

TeraGrid is a multi-year effort to build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research. When completed, the TeraGrid will include 20 teraflops of computing power distributed at five sites, facilities capable of managing and storing nearly 1 petabyte of data, high-resolution visualization environments and toolkits for grid computing. These components will be tightly integrated and connected through a network that will operate at 40 gigabits per second -- the fastest research network on the planet. More information about the TeraGrid is available at http://www.teragrid.org.

About CACR

For almost two decades, the Center for Advanced Computing Research and its predecessors at the California Institute of Technology have provided leading-edge capabilities for computational science and engineering research collaborations and experimented with new technologies to help define the technical computing environment of the future. More information about CACR is available at http://www.cacr.caltech.edu.

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 acquisition of Compaq Computer Corporation on May 3, 2002. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ The four labs include the San Diego Supercomputing Center, the Argonne National Laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the California Institute of Technology.

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

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 and performance 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 quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2003, 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 to update these forward-looking statements.