| HP today unveiled its Z Workstation line based on the Intel 55xx Xeon processor and 54xx chipset. With prices starting under $1000 USD and top end specs including 192GB of RAM, these devices are poised to meet the needs of workstation users for years to come.
I was one of the lucky few who were invited out by HP to attend the unveiling. The first portion of the show was held a BMW DesignWorks USA, the industrial engineering/consulting firm owned by automaker BMW. BMW DesignWorks USA was responsible for the new chassis design of the Z series, which includes such features as tooless design, modular cable free power supplies, very quiet audio profile, built-in case handles, and engineered case airflow. |
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All three systems are capable of powering HP’s billion color DreamColor displays and if you load up Nvidia’s Quadro FX 4800 card you can drive two of those displays per card. The Z600 can handle one Quadro and the Z800 can handle two.
These workstations are shipped with locked processors, so no overclocking is possible. This makes sense as the design philosophy behind a workstation is stablity and reliability. However, this does not mean that these machines are wimpy. Based on the Nehalem core, the Xeon 55xx processors feature QuickConnect (Intel’s version of HyperTransport), and TurboBoost which automatically overclocks individual cores to boost performance of single-threaded tasks.
The systems are not only powerhouse number crunchers but also very capable mega-taskers. The Xeon 55xx (like the i7) brings back Hyperthreading (aka Symmetric Multi-Threading) which allows a two socket system to present itself as a 16-core system. For those of you with less than fond memories of HyperThreading be aware: this is not your daddy’s hyperthreading. These systems are capable of handling tasks like modeling and rendering at the same time, all the while running email and other corprate apps.
After the unveiling, we were treated to a tour of the faciltiies at BMW DesignWorks and then bussed over to Dreamworks Animation for dinner and a showing of the film “Monsters vs. Aliens” (the day before it was released). MVA was created on HP workstations and servers. DreamWorks was an early tester for the Z Series workstations. Various managers and executives testified to us about the time and money saved by using these new powerhouses.
The following day we heard testimonies from various other HP clients as to the benefits of using the new Z Series workstations. I am eagerly awaiting a Z Series workstation for full review on PlanetX64.
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