Posted on 01/05/2026 8:58:06 PM PST by nickcarraway
Remember when HP made its own CPUs and Unix? We wonder if it does
The final version of HPE's own flavor of Unix, HP-UX 11i v3, is now out of support. It is the end of a line that started in 1982.
According to HPE's HP-UX support matrix, the end of life for the final version was the last day of last year:
HP-UX 11i v3 11.31
HPE Integrity: standard support through 31-Dec-2025
The product status is now "Mature Software Product Support without Sustaining Engineering through at least 31-Dec-2028."
HPE's version numbers are complex, but the last release of HP-UX that we can find is HP-UX 11i v3 release 2505.11iv3, which was released on May 22, 2025, for HPE's Integrity servers – as The Register put it a decade ago, "Integrity servers means the Superdome ones running HP-UX with Intel's fading Itanium processors and NUMA."
At least one website misses it already. Last week, OSnews reported "HP-UX hits end-of-life today, and I'm sad." Some see this as a potential opportunity. For instance, SUSE used the news to offer an escape route, explaining "Why SUSE Linux is the Natural Heir."
HP-UX had a good run, after a long and very varied history. The first version ran on the HP 9000 Series 500 range of 32-bit machines based on the HP FOCUS multi-chip CISC processor. In 1984, the Hewlett-Packard Journal ran a detailed article on how that port was created, based on a kernel called SUN – not related to Sun Microsystems' SunOS. The Bitsavers site – run by Al Kossow, who recently recovered UNIX V4 from a 52-year-old tape – has a scan of HP's 1985 brochure [PDF].
HP to sack up to six thousand staff under AI adoption plan, fresh round of cost-cutting HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners Then came a Motorola 68000 version, which ran on top of an AT&T Unix kernel, unusually stored in a ROM chip, in HP's pioneering portable Unix workstation, the HP Integral PC [PDF].
After that, it was rewritten again for HP's own in-house RISC architecture, PA-RISC. This was once a well-liked processor with its own native version of NeXTstep. At one point, Commodore investigated using it for a next-generation Amiga, the Amiga Hombre. However, the writing was on the wall for PA-RISC once HP announced it would be uniting with Intel's new EPIC architecture, as the infant Register reported all the way back in 1999.
For some time, both PA-RISC and Itanium versions were maintained more or less in parallel, until the last few releases, which were for the Itanium only. After that, the writing was on the wall and this news should not be too unexpected. Back in 2012, The Reg reported that the then-monolithic HP had started, then spiked, an x86-64 edition. Once that escape route was shut down and Itanium died, HP-UX was fated to die with it. Intel itself ended Itanium shipments in 2021 and with no new processors, that meant no new Itanium servers, and that left nothing new for HP-UX to run on.
A couple of years later, we covered the end of Linux on Itanium, but we're happy to report that we were wrong that nobody would keep maintaining it out of tree: the EPIC Linux project is still doing just that, and the T2 Linux distro still supports it. T2's lead maintainer, René Rebe, is also behind the Itanium support in GCC. ®
My first computer system was an HP-3000. I saw rows of honeywell computers in Ft wash, pa. most going to china about 1985 or so. RCA was across the river building computers and Burroughs had an office out rt 100. many moons ago.
As a UNIX admin I worked with HPUX for 10 years. It was a pretty good operating system. The HP mid range systems were pretty good. HP support was pretty good as well. HP went downhill after that stupid woman was hired as CEO.
I used that in college in an advanced graduate class for some specialized work.
Sad to hear it has to go.
HP-UX came out in PA-RISC first before MPE/XL so we taught that and the first hardware versions. Folks returned for MPE/XL later.
After working with division for the education rollout. I went back into service at the Barrett Response Center supporting networking and staying almost to the end of MPE/XL support around 2010.
I was fascinated when the 10gig cards came out with Jumbo Frames on HP-UX. Ultimately, I made a 5 Ghz Ethernet network of my own including 5Gz to USB dongles and made my own 9014 Jumbo Frame home network. 9014 works best with cluster size 8192 file systems. 16128 didn't work so well because the cluster size of 16384 was higher.
Scott Merrell at HP 1979-2008. Contractor MPE/XL for HP till 2010.
Those were the best years of my life and miss all the wonderful years and folks met threw HP.
In the early 90s, a grad student intern I’d just hired came into my office and said “You want to see something cool?”
It was a thing called Netscape, running on one of our HP-UX CAD workstations. I told him to leave it running and didn’t get home til 9PM that night. Webcrawler and Gopher sites...
I guess they still sell a variety of stuff, but the only time I ever hear about them is their never-ending schemes to blackmail people into buying their ink and toner cartridges.
Yes. I just bought a new HP printer. Part of the deal is that it only uses HP ink.
bkmk
The HP processors were awesome. I liked that they mapped memory linearly instead of a series of bass-ackwards chunks. HP-UX was very dependable.
“Part of the deal is that it only uses HP ink.”
I recently decided to service our group of HP CP-1525 color lasers instead of replacing with newer units. That decision was because the newer units require HP color cartridges. I guess they are putting a chip in the new cartridges to detect non-OEM media. Also HP ink cartridges are muy expensive.
Absolutely, and getting rid of her didn't stop the decline. The damage was already done.
Spinning off their core business as one of the premier makers of laboratory test equipment and instrumentation to create Agilent was a stupid mistake.
Her association with John McCain says a lot about her.
I used to work for HP and did a lot of programming on HP-UX
Used to be a good company - not anymore..
My biggest gripe with my former HP ink jet printer was that if one of the color cartridges went dry, it would refuse to print black, even though there was still plenty of black ink. Not as bad as Compaq, though, whose cartridges went dry even when not in use.
Of course, HP foolishly bought Compaq.
Yes. There is a chip on the ink cartridge. I recently replaced an HP 8600 that wore out after 10 years. I got essentially the same printer/fax/scanner for $150. During the registration there are endless number of screens about choosing an ink replacement plan with big WARNING messages that only HP ink can be used.
With OpenVMS spun out, HPE must be completely out of the OS business.
Would they make it “free to use, free to develop”?
A limited copyright model. Those sometime work.
My first “real” engineering design projects were on HP-UX computers running Unigraphics and ANSYS. Aside from fancier graphics on today’s machines, not much has changed or improved. A line is still a line an arc is still an arc.
The Motorola 68000 family was my favorite.
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