SAN FRANCISCO – HP showcased two upcoming eight-core workstations – the HP xw6600 and HP xw8600 – at QuadFest earlier this week, which are aimed at computing-intensive industries from scientific imaging to gaming development.Selling workstations to the IT department is somewhat of a shift, said John Thompson, vice-president and worldwide general manager of workstations for HP, since in the past engineers had to convince IT to purchase them.
So workstations represent a good diversity play for VARs, he said, especially since 80 per cent are being sold through the channel. He sees potential opportunities in the oil and gas, public sector, and video and creation markets in Canada.
There is a difference, though, between workstation resellers and traditional desktop resellers, which have expertise in desktop management software and procurement costs. The workstation market requires infrastructure management capabilities and deeper application knowledge – from derivatives training to imaging in health care. “There’s a skill-set that’s clearly required,” he said.
“We also invested to create a local manufacturing plant in Canada,” said Thompson, adding that HP has seen an increase in business since it opened the doors of its Mississauga, Ont.-based plant that offers build-to-order capabilities.
This allows VARs to do additional systems integration work or load on customer images.
The latest workstations, expected to begin shipping in mid-December, are designed for computing-intensive industries, including software design, architecture, gaming development, scientific imaging and oil exploration. Both run on two next-generation quad-core and dual-core Intel Xeon processors, and will include storage capacity of up to 5TB and memory capacity of up to 128GB in the HP xw8600. They’re also 90 per cent recyclable.
Since last year, Intel has shipped millions of quad-core processors and partnered with ISVs to optimize application performance, said Tom Kilroy, vice-president and general manager with Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group. It also focused on working with software programmers to help them program in multi-core.
“The new breed of workstation is super-computing on your desk,” he said. “It reinforces how important this segment of the industry is.” Coming soon is Intel’s Core Microarchitecture, which will drive up performance in a more energy-efficient manner.
El Paso Production, an independent energy company based out of Houston, is using Intel-based quad-core HP workstations and Landmark’s GeoProbe software to analyze and interpret seismic and well data. So far, it’s seen a 400 per cent improvement in seismic analysis throughput.
Oil and gas companies pay millions to do a seismic survey. “You need to be right,” said Keith Cockerham, technical programmer with Landmark (the software arm of El Paso). “It pays to use high-end tools to get closer to the truth.”
Engineers and scientists have been limited by the amount of RAM their workstations can support – some would run up to 500GB if it was possible. So they have to take advantage of every core on the system, he said.
“It makes our job a lot easier as programmers,” said Cockerham. El Paso can use the software to analyze 120 cubic miles of earth – what used to take about two weeks (by drawing 3D lines and making a mesh) now takes a couple of minutes.
Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies, a mechanical engineering consulting firm, has cut turnaround time on some of its computer simulations down to one-tenth using quad-core. It’s also found that simulations are more accurate at earlier stages of the design process.
“Who cares about quad-core?” said Eric Miller, co-founder of PADT. “Well, we do.” The firm has about 50 employees, and some 20,000 companies use its software.
“Sometimes we just have huge honking problems to solve,” he said. “You have to model the whole thing to get the flow right.” While he’s running simulations, he’s also e-mailing people, Skyping people and making presentations, which he can now do all at the same time.
So far, the firm has seen a 30 per cent increase in production from its engineers – and has been able to take on work it would have previously turned down.
Workstations are also being used in virtualization – an area where graphics has been lagging behind. “With thin clients, most of us think of 2D graphics and simple applications,” said Dan Nordhues, director of product marketing for blade workstations with HP.
While blade workstations can be used for business continuity, management and control purposes, they can also empower a distributed workforce through the use of remote graphics software. Users can work locally or remotely over a standard networking connection using a VPN.
One potential use is for disaster recovery, where government agencies dealing with a Katrina-type situation could see the same information on multiple machines, including field laptops.
Blade workstations, at this point, are targeted mainly at tier-one and tier-two customers in the enterprise and public sector. HP is also in discussions with some integrators about the possibility of offering this as a managed service.