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A workstation, such as a Unix workstation, RISC workstation or engineering workstation, is a high-end technical computing desktop microcomputer designed primarily to be used by one person at a time, but can also be accessed remotely by other users when necessary. Workstations usually offer higher performance than normally found in a personal computer, especially with respect to graphics, processing power and multitasking ability. At its main console, a workstation is optimized for displaying and manipulating complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulation results, mathematical plots, etc. Consoles usually consist of a high resolution display, a keyboard and a mouse as a minimum, but often support dual displays to double the viewable information. For advanced visualization tasks, specialized hardware such as SpaceBall can be used in conjunction with MCAD software to improve depth perception. Workstations, in general, are usually first to offer accessories and collaboration tools such as videoconferencing capability. Following the performance trends of computers in general, today's average personal computer is more powerful than the top-of-the-line workstations of one generation before. As a result, the workstation market is becoming increasingly more specialized, since many complex operations that formerly required high-end systems can now be handled by general-purpose PCs. However, workstation hardware is optimized for high data throughput, large amounts of memory, multitasking and multithreaded computing; in situations requiring considerable computing power, workstations remain usable while traditional personal computers quickly become unresponsive. Differing design philosophies between personal computers and technical workstations
Examples of the first workstations Perhaps the first computer that might qualify as a "workstation" was the IBM 1620, 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 was that it lacked any actual arithmetic circuitry at all! To perform addition, it required a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This saved on the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive. The machine was code-named CADET, which some people waggishly claimed meant "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try". Nonetheless, it rented initially for over $1000 a month. Later, in 1965, IBM introduced the IBM 1130 scientific computer, which was meant as the successor to the 1620. Both of these systems came with the ability to run programs written in Fortran and other languages. Both the 1620 and the 1130 were built into roughly desk-sized cabinets. Both were available with add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punched-card I/O. A console typewriter for direct interaction was standard on each. Early examples of workstations were generally cheap minicomputers; a system designed to support a number of users would instead be reserved exclusively for one person. A notable example was the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation, regarded to be the first commercial minicomputer. The first computers specifically designed for one user (and so a workstation in the modern sense of the term) were the Lisp machines developed at MIT around 1974. Other early examples include the famous Xerox Star (1981) and the less well known Three Rivers PERQ (1979). In the early 1980s, successors in this field were Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems who created Unix-based workstations based on the Motorola 68000 processor. Meanwhile DARPA's VLSI project created several spinoff graphics products as well, notably the SGI 3130, and Silicon Graphics' range of machines that followed. It was not uncommon to differentiate the target market for the products, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations, while the SGI machines were graphics workstations. Workstations tended to be very expensive, typically several times the cost of a standard PC and sometimes costing as much as a new car. But minicomputers sometimes cost as much as a house! The high expense usually came from using costlier components that ran faster than those found at the local computer store, as well as the inclusion of features not found in PCs of the time, such as high-speed networking and sophisticated graphics. Workstation manufacturers also tend to take a "balanced" approach to system design, making certain to avoid bottlenecks so that data can flow unimpeded between the many different subsystems within a computer. Additionally, workstations, given their more specialized nature, tend to have higher profit margins than commodity-driven PCs. The systems that come out of workstation companies often feature SCSI or Fibre Channel disk storage systems, high-end 3D accelerators, single or multiple 64-bit processors, large amounts of RAM, and well-designed cooling. Additionally, the companies that make the products tend to have very good repair/replacement plans. However, the line between workstation and PC is increasingly becoming blurred as the demand for fast computers, networking and graphics have become common in the consumer world, allowing workstation manufacturers to use "off the shelf" PC components and graphics solutions as opposed to proprietary in-house developed technology. 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. There have been several attempts to produce a workstation-like machine specifically for the lowest possible price point as opposed to performance. One approach is to remove local storage and reduce the machine to the processor, keyboard, mouse and screen. These machines fill a niche much closer to a terminal than a computer, but when combined with a server there was an argument that they would lead to a lower cost of ownership. The 3Station by 3Com was a typical early example, and Sun has also introduced similar machines on several occasions. However, traditional PCs continue to drop in price, which tends to undercut the market for products of this type. What makes a workstation? Consumer products such as PCs (and even game consoles) today use components that are often at or near the cutting edge of technology; this makes deciding whether or not to purchase a workstation very difficult for many organizations. Sometimes these systems are still required, but many places opt for the less-expensive, if more fault-prone, PC-level hardware. It is instructive to take a detailed look at the history of specific technologies which once differentiated workstations from personal computers. The modern reader might be amused at what was considered the target for a high-end workstation in the early 1980s, the so-called "3M computer": a megabyte of memory, a megapixel display (roughly 1000x1000), and a "'''m'''egaFLOPS" compute performance (at least one million floating point instructions per second). However, this was an order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of the time; the original 1981 IBM PC had 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around 1 kiloFLOPS (30 kiloFLOPS with the optional 8087 math coprocessor). Other desirable features not found in desktop computers at that time included networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses. (Another goal was to bring the price for such a system down under a "megapenny", that is, less than $10,000; this was not achieved until the late 1980s.) RFC 782 defined the workstation environment more generally as hardware and software dedicated to serve a single user, and that it provide for the use of additional shared resources. 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: These days, workstations have changed greatly. Since many of the components are now the same as those used in the consumer market, the price differential between workstations and consumer PCs is correspondingly much narrower than it once was. For example, some low-end workstations use CISC based processors like the Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64 as their CPUs. Higher-end workstations still use more sophisticated CPUs such as Intel Itanium 2, AMD Opteron, IBM POWER, MIPS or Sun's UltraSPARC, and run a variant of Unix, delivering a truly reliable workhorse for computing-intensive tasks. (PA-RISC and Alpha CPUs are still sold in workstations but are excluded in the above list as they are reaching their end-of-life soon.) Some workstations are designed for use with only one specific application such as AutoCAD, Avid Xpress Studio HD, 3D Studio Max, etc. To ensure compatibility with the software, purchasers usually ask for a certificate from the software vendor. The certification process makes the workstation's price jump several notches but for professional purposes, reliability is more important than the cost. List of workstations and manufacturers Note that many of these are extinct. See also | |||||||||
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