The PA-8900 processor is a dual-core microprocessor chip that runs at the same speeds - 800 MHz and 1 GHz but doubles the 32 MB cache of the PA-8800 microprocessor to 64 MB. Like the PA-8800, the PA-8900 microprocessor achieves a compelling, balanced increase in performance over the PA-8700+ and previous versions of the PA-RISC microprocessor in a broad range of commercial and technical computing applications. Key advances include greater compute density, a higher-bandwidth system bus, and a large second-level cache, translating into a significant performance boost. In addition to these performance increases, the PA-8900 processor provides significant advances in high availability and lower power requirements compared to previous generations of PA-RISC processors.