A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a
local area network
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...
and run
multi-user
Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving t ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
s. The term ''workstation'' has been used loosely to refer to everything from a
mainframe computer
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
,
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
,
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo wa ...
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...
revolution of the late 1990s.
Workstations offer higher performance than mainstream
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
graphics
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...
, memory, and multitasking. Workstations are optimized for the
visualization
Visualization or visualisation may refer to:
*Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message
* Data visualization, the graphic representation of data
* Information visualiz ...
and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulations like
computational fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate th ...
,
animation
Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...
,
medical imaging
Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to rev ...
, image rendering, and mathematical plots. Typically, the form factor is that of a
desktop computer
A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...
, which consists of a high-resolution display, a
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
, and a
mouse
A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...
at a minimum, but also offers multiple displays,
graphics tablet
A graphics tablet (also known as a digitizer, digital graphic tablet, pen tablet, drawing tablet, external drawing pad or digital art board) is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images, animations and graphics, with a spec ...
s, and 3D mice for manipulating objects and navigating scenes. Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories, and collaboration tools like
videoconferencing
Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...
.
The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs since the late 1990s have reduced distinction between the PCs and workstations. Typical 1980s workstations have expensive proprietary hardware and operating systems to categorically distinguish from standardized PCs. From the 1990s and 2000s, IBM's
RS/6000
The RISC System/6000 (RS/6000) is a family of Reduced instruction set computer, RISC-based Unix Server (computing), servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT PC computer platform in ...
and
IntelliStation
The IntelliStation was originally a workstation-class personal computer announced in March 1997 developed by IBM as the follow-on to the PC Series 360 and 365. Certain IntelliStation M Pro Series were near hardware identical to low end IBM Netf ...
have
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
-based
POWER
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
CPUs running
AIX
Aix or AIX may refer to:
Computing
* AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems
*An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set
*Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point
Places Belgium
...
, and its
IBM PC Series
The Personal Computer Series, or PC Series, was IBM's follow-up to the Personal System/2 and PS/ValuePoint. Announced in October 1994 and withdrawn in October 2000, it was replaced by the IBM NetVista, apart from the Pentium Pro-based PC360 an ...
and
Aptiva
The IBM Aptiva personal computer was introduced in September 1994 as the replacement for the IBM PS/1. The first Aptiva models were based on the Intel 80486 CPU with later models using the Pentium and AMD CPUs. All systems were developed in-house ...
corporate and consumer PCs have Intel x86 CPUs. However, by the early 2000s, this difference largely disappeared, since workstations use highly commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
,
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
, and
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
, selling
x86-64
x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mod ...
systems running
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
or
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
.
History
Origins and development
Perhaps the first computer that might qualify as a workstation is the
IBM 1620
The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive scientific computer. After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970. Modified versions of the 1620 were used as ...
, a small scientific computer designed to be used interactively by a single person sitting at the console. It was introduced in 1959. One peculiar feature of the machine is that it lacks any arithmetic circuitry. To perform addition, it requires a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This reduced the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive. The machine is
codename
A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a Code word (figure of speech), code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may ...
d CADET and was initially rented for $1000 per month.
In 1965, the
IBM 1130
The IBM 1130 Computing System, introduced in 1965, was IBM's least expensive computer at that time. A binary 16-bit machine, it was marketed to price-sensitive, computing-intensive technical markets, like education and engineering, succeeding th ...
scientific computer became the successor to 1620. Both of these systems run Fortran and other languages. They are built into roughly desk-sized cabinets, with console typewriters. They have optional add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punched-card I/O.
Early workstations are generally dedicated
minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...
s, a multiuser system reserved for one user. For example, the
PDP-8
The PDP-8 is a 12-bit computing, 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's ...
from
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...
, is regarded as the first commercial minicomputer.
The
Lisp machine
Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, the ...
s developed at
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
in the early 1970s pioneered some workstation principles, as high-performance, networked, single-user systems intended for heavily interactive use. Lisp Machines were commercialized beginning 1980 by companies like
Symbolics
Symbolics was a computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.
,
Lisp Machines
Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, the ...
,
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...
(the
TI Explorer
The Texas Instruments Explorer is a family of Lisp machine computers. These computers were sold by Texas Instruments (TI) in the 1980s. The Explorer is based on a design from Lisp Machines Incorporated, which is based on the MIT Lisp machine. The ...
) and
Xerox
Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
(the Interlisp-D workstations). The first computer designed for a single user, with high-resolution graphics (and so a workstation in the modern sense of the term), is the
Alto
The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian (Latin: ''altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In 4-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruses by ...
developed at
Xerox PARC
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...
Xerox Star
The Xerox Star workstation, officially named Xerox 8010 Information System, is the first commercial personal computer to incorporate technologies that have since become standard in personal computers, including a bitmapped display, a window-based ...
(1981).
1980s rise in popularity
In the early 1980s, with the advent of
32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...
microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...
s such as the
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...
, several new competitors appeared, including
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo wa ...
and
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
, with workstations based on 68000 and
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
. Meanwhile,
DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Adv ...
's
VLSI Project
The VLSI Project was a DARPA-program initiated by Robert Kahn in 1978 that provided research funding to a wide variety of university-based teams in an effort to improve the state of the art in microprocessor design, then known as Very Large Scale ...
created several spinoff graphics products, such as the
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...
3130
__NOTOC__
Year 313 ( CCCXIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Constantinus and Licinianus (or, less frequently, ye ...
. Target markets were differentiated, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations and SGI as graphics workstations.
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
CPUs increased in the mid-1980s, typical of workstation vendors.
Workstations often feature
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...
or
Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...
disk storage systems, high-end
3D accelerator
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...
s, single or multiple
64-bit
In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...
processors
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
, large amounts of
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
, and well-designed cooling. Additionally, the companies that make the products tend to have comprehensive repair/replacement plans. As the distinction between workstation and PC fades, however, workstation manufacturers have increasingly employed "off-the-shelf" PC components and graphics solutions rather than proprietary hardware or software. Some "low-cost" workstations are still expensive by PC standards but offer binary compatibility with higher-end workstations and servers made by the same vendor. This allows software development to take place on low-cost (relative to the server) desktop machines.
Thin clients
Workstations diversified to the lowest possible price point as opposed to performance, called the
thin client
In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in th ...
or
network computer
The Network Computer (or NC) was a diskless desktop computer device made by Oracle Corporation from about 1996 to 2000. The devices were designed and manufactured by an alliance, which included Sun Microsystems, IBM, and others. The devices w ...
. Dependent upon a network and server, this reduces the machine to having no hard drive, and only the CPU, keyboard, mouse, and screen. Some
diskless node
A diskless node (or diskless workstation) is a workstation or personal computer without disk drives, which employs network booting to load its operating system from a server. (A computer may also be said to ''act as a diskless node'', if its disks ...
s still run a traditional operating system and perform computations locally, with storage on a remote
server
Server may refer to:
Computing
*Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients
Role
* Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...
. These are intended to reduce the initial system purchase cost, and the
total cost of ownership
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting or even ecolog ...
, by reducing the amount of administration required per user.
This approach was first attempted as a replacement for PCs in office productivity applications, with the
3Station
The 3Station was a diskless workstation, developed by Bob Metcalfe at 3Com and first available in 1986. The 3Station/2E had a 10 MHz 80286 processor, 1 megabyte of RAM (expandable to ), VGA-compatible graphics with of video RAM, and integrated ...
by
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...
. In the 1990s,
X terminal
In computing, an X terminal is a display/input terminal for X Window System client applications. X terminals enjoyed a period of popularity in the early 1990s when they offered a lower total cost of ownership alternative to a full Unix workstati ...
s filled a similar role for technical computing. Sun's
thin client
In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in th ...
s include the
Sun Ray
The Sun Ray was a stateless thin client computer (and associated software) aimed at corporate environments, originally introduced by Sun Microsystems in September 1999 and discontinued by Oracle Corporation in 2014. It featured a smart card r ...
product line. However, traditional workstations and PCs continued to drop in price and complexity, undercutting this market.
3M computer
A high-end workstation of the early 1980s with the three Ms, or a "3M computer" (coined by Raj Reddy and his colleagues at CMU), has one megabyte of RAM, a megapixel display (roughly 1000×1000 pixels), and one "
MegaFLOPS
In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...
" compute performance (at least one million floating-point operations per second). RFC 782 defines the workstation environment more generally as "hardware and software dedicated to serve a single user", and that it provisions additional shared resources. This is at least one order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of the time. The original 1981
IBM Personal Computer
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
has 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around ( with the optional 8087 math coprocessor. Other features beyond the typical personal computer include networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses.
Another goal was to bring the price below one " megapenny", that is, less than , which was achieved in the late 1980s. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many workstations cost from to or more.
Decline
The more widespread adoption of these technologies into mainstream PCs was a direct factor in the decline of the workstation as a separate market segment:
* Extremely reliable components: together with multiple CPUs with greater cache and error-correcting memory, this may remain the distinguishing feature of a workstation today. Although most technologies implemented in modern workstations are also available at a lower cost for the consumer market, finding good components and making sure they work compatibly with each other is a great challenge in workstation building. Because workstations are designed for high-end tasks such as weather forecasting, video rendering, and game design, it is taken for granted that these systems must be running under full load, non-stop for several hours or even days without issue. Any off-the-shelf components can be used to build a workstation, but the reliability of such components under such rigorous conditions is uncertain. For this reason, almost no workstations are built by the customer themselves but rather purchased from a vendor such as
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
/
HP Inc.
HP Inc. is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printers and related supplies, as well as 3D printing solutions.
It was formed on November ...
,
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
Lenovo
Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, Personal computer, personal computers, ...
,
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
,
SGI SGI may refer to:
Companies
*Saskatchewan Government Insurance
*Scientific Games International, a gambling company
*Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products
*Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...
,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
, or
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
.
* High-performance
3D graphics
3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the ...
hardware for
computer-aided design
Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
(CAD) and
computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may ...
(CGI) animation is increasingly popular in the PC market around the mid-to-late 1990s mostly driven by computer gaming, yielding the first official GPU in
Nvidia
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
's NV10 and the breakthrough
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Announced on August 31, 1999 and released on October 11, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor (RIVA TNT2) by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines ...
.
* High-performance
CPUs
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
: the first
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
of the early 1980s offer roughly one order of magnitude in performance improvement over CISC processors of comparable cost.
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
's
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
CISC family always had the edge in market share and the
economies of scale
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...
that this implied. By the mid-1990s, some CISC processors like the
Motorola 68040
The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nami ...
and Intel's
80486
The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the ...
and
Pentium
Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and Pe ...
have performance parity with RISC in some areas, such as integer performance (at the cost of greater chip complexity) and hardware
floating-point
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...
calculations, relegating RISC to even more high-end markets.
* Hardware support for
floating-point
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...
operations: optional on the original IBM PC; remained on a separate chip for Intel systems until the
80486DX
The Intel 486, officially named i486 and also known as 80486, is a microprocessor. It is a higher-performance follow-up to the Intel 386. The i486 was introduced in 1989. It represents the fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs following the ...
processor. Even then, x86 floating-point performance lags other processors due to limitations in its architecture. Today even low-price PCs now have performance in the gigaFLOPS range.
* High-performance/high-capacity data storage: early workstations tend to use proprietary disk interfaces until the SCSI standard of the mid-1980s. Although SCSI interfaces soon became available for IBM PCs, they were comparatively expensive and tend to be limited by the speed of the PC's ISA peripheral bus. SCSI is an advanced controller interface good for multitasking and daisy chaining. This makes it suited for use in servers, and its benefits to desktop PCs which mostly run single-user operating systems are less clear, but it is standard on the 1980s-1990s Macintosh.
Serial ATA
SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...
is more modern, with throughput comparable to SCSI but at a lower cost.
* High-speed networking (10 Mbit/s or better): 10 Mbit/s network interfaces were commonly available for PCs by the early 1990s, although by that time workstations were pursuing even higher networking speeds, moving to 100 Mbit/s, 1 Gbit/s, and 10 Gbit/s. However, economies of scale and the demand for high-speed networking in even non-technical areas have dramatically decreased the time it takes for newer networking technologies to reach commodity price points.
* Large displays (17- to 21-inch) with high resolutions and high refresh rate, which were rare among PCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s but became common among PCs by the late 1990s.
* Large memory configurations: PCs (such as IBM clones) are originally limited to 640 KB of RAM until the 1982 introduction of the
80286
The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non-multiplexed address and data buses and also the fi ...
processor; early workstations have megabytes of memory. IBM clones require special programming techniques to address more than 640 KB until the 80386, as opposed to other 32-bit processors such as
SPARC
SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...
which provide straightforward access to nearly their entire 4 GB memory address range. 64-bit workstations and servers supporting an address range far beyond 4 GB have been available since the early 1990s, a technology just beginning to appear in the PC desktop and server market in the mid-2000s.
*
Operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
: early workstations ran the
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
operating system (OS), a
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
variant, or an unrelated equivalent OS such as VMS. The PC CPUs of the time have limitations in memory capacity and memory access protection, making them unsuitable to run OSes of this sophistication, but this, too, began to change in the late 1980s as PCs with the
32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...
80386
The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsMMUs became widely affordable and enabling
OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...
and
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.1 is the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, released on July 27, 1993.
At the time of Windows NT's release, Microsoft's Windows 3.1 desktop environment had established brand recognition ...
.
* Tight integration between the OS and the hardware: Workstation vendors both design the hardware and maintain the Unix operating system variant that runs on it. This allows for much more rigorous testing than is possible with an operating system such as Windows. Windows requires that third-party hardware vendors write compliant hardware drivers that are stable and reliable. Also, minor variations in hardware quality such as timing or build quality can affect the reliability of the overall machine. Workstation vendors are able to ensure both the quality of the hardware, and the stability of the operating system drivers by validating these things in-house, and this leads to a generally much more reliable and stable machine.
Market position
Since the late 1990s, the workstation and consumer markets have further merged. Many low-end workstation components are now the same as the consumer market, and the price differential narrowed. For example, most
Macintosh Quadra
The Macintosh Quadra is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1991 to October 1995. The Quadra, named for the Motorola 68040 central processing unit, replaced the Macintosh II family as ...
computers were originally intended for scientific or design work, all with the
Motorola 68040
The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nami ...
CPU, backward compatible with
68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...
Macintoshes. The consumer
Macintosh IIcx
The Macintosh IIcx is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from March 1989 to March 1991. Introduced six months after the Macintosh IIx, the IIcx resembles the IIx and provides the same performance, but is ...
and
Macintosh IIci
The Macintosh IIci is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from September 1989 to February 1993. It is a more powerful version of the Macintosh IIcx, released earlier that year, and shares the same compa ...
models can be upgraded to the
Quadra 700
The Macintosh Quadra 700 was a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from October 1991 to March 1993. It was introduced alongside the Macintosh Quadra 900, Quadra 900 as the first computers in the Macintosh Quadra, ...
. "In an era when many professionals preferred Silicon Graphics workstations, the Quadra 700 was an intriguing option at a fraction of the cost" as resource-intensive software such as
Infini-D Infini-D was a 3D computer graphics program developed by Specular International. It was continued by MetaCreations when Specular merged with them, developing up to version 4.5, then combined with Ray Dream Studio to create Carrara. Soon after, Meta ...
brought "studio-quality 3D rendering and animations to the home desktop". The Quadra 700 can run
A/UX
A/UX is Apple Computer's Unix-based operating system for Macintosh computers, integrated with System 7's graphical interface and application compatibility. Launched in 1988 and discontinued in 1995 with version 3.1.1, it is Apple's first official ...
3.0, making it a
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
workstation. Another example is the
Nvidia
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Announced on August 31, 1999 and released on October 11, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor (RIVA TNT2) by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines ...
consumer graphics card, which spawned the
Quadro
Quadro was Nvidia's brand for graphics cards intended for use in workstations running professional computer-aided design (CAD), computer-generated imagery (CGI), digital content creation (DCC) applications, scientific calculations and machine ...
workstation card, which has the same GPU but different driver support and certifications for CAD applications and a much higher price.
Workstations have typically driven advancements in CPU technology. All computers benefit from multi-processor and multicore designs (essentially, multiple processors on a
die
Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life.
Die may also refer to:
Games
* Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers
Manufacturing
* Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...
). The multicore design was pioneered by IBM's
POWER4
The POWER4 is a microprocessor developed by International Business Machines (IBM) that implemented the 64-bit PowerPC and PowerPC AS instruction set architectures. Released in 2001, the POWER4 succeeded the POWER3 and RS64 microprocessors, ena ...
; it and Intel Xeon have multiple CPUs, more on-die cache, and ECC memory.
Some workstations are designed or certified for use with only one specific application such as
AutoCAD
AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. Developed and marketed by Autodesk, AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. ...
, Avid Xpress Studio HD, or 3D Studio Max. The certification process increases workstation prices.
Current market
Decline of RISC workstations
By January 2009, all
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
-based workstation product lines had been discontinued:
* Hewlett-Packard withdrew its last
HP 9000
HP 9000 is a line of workstation and server computer systems produced by the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company. The native operating system for almost all HP 9000 systems is HP-UX, which is based on UNIX System V.
The HP 9000 brand was introduced in ...
PA-RISC-based desktop products from the market in January 2008.
* IBM retired the IntelliStation POWER on January 2, 2009.
* SGI ended general availability of its MIPS-based
SGI Fuel
The SGI Fuel is a mid-range workstation developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). It was introduced in January 2002, with a list price of US$11,495. Together with the entire MIPS platform, general availability for the Fuel end ...
and
SGI Tezro
The SGI Tezro is a series of high-end computer workstations sold by SGI from 2003 until 2006. Using MIPS CPUs and running IRIX, it is the immediate successor to the SGI Octane line. The systems were produced in both rack-mount and tower versi ...
workstations in December 2006.
* Sun Microsystems announced end-of-life for its last Sun Ultra SPARC workstations in October 2008.
In early 2018, RISC workstations were reintroduced in a series of IBM
POWER9
POWER9 is a family of superscalar, multithreading, multi-core microprocessors produced by IBM, based on the Power ISA. It was announced in August 2016. The POWER9-based processors are being manufactured using a 14 nm FinFET process, in ...
-based systems by Raptor Computing Systems. The
Mac transition to Apple silicon
The Mac transition to Apple silicon is the process of changing the central processing units (CPUs) of Apple Inc.'s line of Mac computers from Intel's x86-64 processors to Apple-designed systems on a chip that use the ARM64 architecture. CE ...
greatly increased performance, power efficiency, and size efficiency over x86-64 with its ARM-based RISC architecture.
x86-64
Most of the current workstation market uses x86-64 microprocessors. Operating systems include
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...
,
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...
s,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, and
Solaris
Solaris may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...
. Some vendors also market commodity mono-socket systems as workstations.
These are three types of workstations:
# Workstation blade systems (IBM HC10 or Hewlett-Packard xw460c.
Sun Visualization System Sun Visualization System was a sharable visualization product introduced by Sun Microsystems in January 2007. It used other Sun technologies, including Sun servers, Solaris, Sun Ray Ultra-Thin Clients, and Sun Grid Engine. The Sun Visualizatio ...
is akin to these solutions)
# Ultra high-end workstation (
SGI Virtu
SGI Virtu is a computer product line from Silicon Graphics dedicated to visualization, announced in April 2008. It represents a return of Silicon Graphics to the visualization market after several years of focus on high-performance computing.
S ...
VS3xx)
# Deskside systems containing server-class CPUs and chipsets on large server-class motherboards with high-end RAM ( HP Z-series workstations and
Fujitsu CELSIUS
The Fujitsu Celsius is a line of laptop and workstation computers manufactured by Fujitsu. The brand name has also been used for graphic accelerators.
The laptops have Intel Core vPro, i5, or i7 processors, while the workstations have one or two ...
workstations)
Definition
A high-end desktop market segment includes workstations, with PC operating systems and components. Component product lines may be segmented, with premium components that are functionally similar to the consumer models but with higher robustness or performance.
A workstation-class PC may have some of the following features:
* Larger number of memory sockets which use registered (buffered) modules
* Multiple displays
* Reliable high-performance graphics card
* Multiple processor sockets, powerful CPUs
* Run reliable operating system with advanced features
* Support for
ECC memory
Error correction code memory (ECC memory) is a type of computer data storage that uses an error correction code (ECC) to detect and correct n-bit data corruption which occurs in memory. ECC memory is used in most computers where data corruption c ...
See also
*
Gaming computer
A gaming computer or gaming PC is a personal computer specifically designed for playing video games at very high graphic and gameplay configurations. Gaming PCs typically differ from mainstream personal computers by using high-performance video ...
*
List of computer system manufacturers
A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and the means to use peripheral equipment needed and used for full or mostly full operation. Such systems may constitute personal com ...
*
Music workstation
A music workstation is an electronic musical instrument providing the facilities of:
*a sound module,
*a music sequencer and
*(usually) a musical keyboard.
It enables a musician to compose electronic music using just one piece of equipment.
Origin ...
*
Personal supercomputer
A personal supercomputer (PSC) is a marketing ploy used by computer manufacturers for high-performance computer systems and was a popular term in the mid 2000s to early 2010s. There is no exact definition for what a personal supercomputer is. Many ...
*
Remote Graphics Software
HP ZCentral Remote Boost, formerly known as HP Remote Graphics Software or HP RGS is a client-server remote desktop software developed by HP Inc. and initially launched in 2003. HP RGS enables remote access to high-performance workstations (or ...