Mobile Workstations
Post date: Apr 09, 2017 3:25:2 AM
The definition of workstation computer has evolved through the years.
Unix Workstations (1990s)
My first contact with workstations were the Unix RISC workstations in the 1990s from DEC, IBM, SGI, HP and SUN. These ran Ultrix on MIPS, OSF/1 on Alpha, AIX on Power, IRIX on MIPS, HP-UX on PA-RISC, Solaris on SPARC.
Basically a workstation was a standalone but networked Unix RISC computer, with a big colour monitor with a GUI desktop that the user could use at the console to do software development, Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), or computer animation.
Some of the workstations had hardware 3D graphics capability. In those days to run CAD (mechanical or electronics engineering) or CAM application, one needed to buy an expensive Unix workstation
The GUI desktops included HP VUE (Visual User Environment), CDE (Common Desktop Environment, a common vendor effort that evolved from VUE), SGI Indigo Magic that was later renamed IRIX Interactive Desktop and SUN OpenWindows.
Curiously, in those days DEC also marketed their Alpha workstations and servers as being able to run Microsoft Windows NT. I had seen a DEC Alpha workstation at a trade show running PTC Pro/Engineer on Windows NT 3.51. It looked like a Windows 3.1 PC desktop, except it was a high end workstation.
Of course, I never understood why DEC would want to promote its 64 bit pioneering machines to run 32 bit Windows. One clue was that the PTC person at the trade show booth told me that he preferred to use the Windows version rather the Unix version of Pro/Engineer. So the reason is CDE sucks at being a compelling desktop, or users are more familiar with Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 desktop, or maybe both?
Intel Workstations (late 1990s till now)
In the late 1990s workstations with Intel Pentium Pro processors and its decendants started appearing. The first ones I had come into contact with were Intergraph running Windows NT 4, and HP ones running Red Hat Linux.
Most of the Intel workstations sold ran Microsoft Windows NT. These were used as Unix workstation replacements to do CAD. They were cheaper and faster than the Unix workstations they replaced.
I had read that at one time Intel's definition of a workstation was that it had to have two processors.
The Unix workstation market was basically dead from then onwards and Unix workstations were only for some specialized use cases.
Current Modern Defintion of Workstation
The current definition of workstation, which has not changed from 2008 till now (I bought a SUN Microsystems Ultra 40 M2 Workstation in 2008), is a desktop computer with Intel or AMD server processors, with professional graphics card from NVIDIA or AMD. The OS is more commonly Microsoft Windows, with some workstations on one of the GNU/Linux distributions, both enterprise and community versions.
Intel and AMD server processors use ECC memory.
Professional graphics cards (can be 2D or 3D) are certified with professional ISV applications. Besides having better quality components and better stability, they also have additional graphics features not available in consumer graphics cards. These features are actually a deliberate attempt by the graphics manufacturers to "de-feature" the consumer graphics cards so as to maintain a distinct difference between very high margin professional and much cheaper consumer products. In fact, the graphics processors of professional and consumer cards are either very similar, or may even be identical except for binning.
Incidentally, I did try to look for the so-called features of the NVIDIA Quadro with PTC Pro/Engineer and ANSYS Mechanical, and failed to find any. Maybe those features were not implemented in these applications. In fact, the graphics on both Quadro and GeForce looked identical. Whereas the ATI Radeon graphics looked distinctly different in ANSYS Mechanical, with graduations of colour on the object, whereas the NVIDIA graphics showed a flat coloured object.
ECC Memory
While Error-correcting code (ECC) memory is widely used in servers and workstations, they are rarely used in consumer products. This is obviously to save costs. ECC can detect and correct against single bit and/or multiple bit errors, depending on the particular system.
Cosmic rays and failing DRAM chips can cause bit flips in DRAM. Processor caches have ECC protection, yet DRAM modules that are many times bigger in capacity, are not ECC protected in most consumer computers. Without the benefit of ECC, how does one know that there are no errors in the application, any simulation results, or spreadsheet due to bit flips or DRAM faults? In fact, memory module failures are very common in servers. You are talking about server memory modules that are made of top bin memory chips, with better materials, manufacturing and testing processes than consumer parts, which still fail in use. Although most desktop and notebook computers do not run 24x7 like servers, what are the chances that memory failures will occur with bit flips? Without ECC, there will not be any error logs, so any memory errors are silent, unless the faults cause system crashes.
An ECC DRAM module that reports excessive ECC errors is failing and should be replaced.
My personal experience is that such ECC DRAM modules can remarkably protect against errors in the system and application running, and continue running for weeks without system crash or application result errors. That was when we had simulation jobs that could not be stopped for component replacement as we needed the results urgently. I have done that a few times with the SUN Microsystems Fire Opteron servers, when the DRAM modules were reporting tens of ECC errors every second. Personally, I have never had a server or workstation crash due to memory errors.
AMD processors, including desktop ones like Athlon 64, Phenom, Phenom II, FX, support ECC DRAM. There were no ECC SO-DIMMs, so there is no support for ECC DRAM in the AMD notebook processors. Intel does not support ECC DRAM for the consumer desktop processors; one has to purchase Xeon server and workstation processors to benefit from ECC DRAM.
Every computer I have bought or built for work or home has ECC DRAM, except for notebooks. Even the DIY PCs (with AMD Athlon 64 X2, Phenom II and Opteron) I built for myself or for the work place for CAD, simulation or lab equipment control have unbuffered ECC DRAM modules. My very first computer, built in 2005, has an AMD Opteron 175 with two Kingston 1 GB unbuffered ECC DRAM modules. Unbuffered ECC DRAM modules cost a lot more than non-ECC unbuffered DRAM modules, and I had to specially order them from distributors since they do not have stocks of such non-mainstream products.
All these systems have proven to be stable with trustworthy results, as compared to the workstations from SUN and IBM that I managed.
An exception was made in 2015, when I built a home PC with AMD A10-7800 APU. AMD APUs do not support ECC DRAM. I guess that is a cost cutting measure, with a 64 bit rather than a 72 bit DRAM interface to support ECC. The alternative I had then was an AMD FX processor, which is an overkill for the purpose of the PC.
I have already explained why it is important for a computer to have ECC DRAM, and that workstation computers all have ECC DRAM. In fact, now even the GPUs used for general purpose compute also have ECC memory.
Mobile Workstations
According to Wikipedia, the very first NVIDIA mobile Quadro was launched in 2003.
Around that time, notebook computer manufacturers started offering notebook computers that were marketed as mobile workstations. These were essentially business class notebooks, with a high end Intel notebook processor, but differentiated with a NVIDIA mobile Quadro graphics card. The inclusion of professional graphics cards allow these notebooks to be certified for professional ISV applications. These notebook computers, available with 15" and 17" screens, were the most expensive models, and the heaviest, in the business class notebook series.
However, the workstation moniker was applied only because of the NVIDIA Quadro graphics card. The processor and DRAM modules were still consumer class without ECC memory. Can one really be very sure to trust the results of these notebooks? Therefore I never thought that these are true workstations.
True Mobile Workstations
Something happened in year 2016. Notebook computers with Intel Skylake mobile Xeon quad core processors and ECC memory became available. DDR4 SO-DIMMs with ECC were available in the market, the first time that SO-DIMM with ECC was available that I know of.
Not only that, these notebooks pack big punches. These include, options for 4K 15.6" or 17.3" IPS screens, four CPU cores, four SO-DIMM sockets, for up to 64 GB of two channels of very high bandwidth DDR4 memory, Thunderbolt 3, up to three or four drives, including hard drives and NVMe SSDs, NVIDIA mobile Quadro with up to 8 GB memory. With very high IO speeds from SSDs, and economic storage capacity of hard drives, there are very few bottlenecks for most users running demanding professional applications. In fact, these mobile workstations when fully configured to the max are more powerful than most desktops out there. They are pre-installed with Microsoft Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit or Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit. For developers and engineers, one can also run many virtual machines with all that memory and IO available.
While many places are still using Windows 7 as a corporate standard desktop, Windows 7 is showing its age. Microsoft Windows 10 brings with it a lot of performance and security enhancements to properly exploit the latest hardware and unlock the full potential of these mobile workstations.
Next Generation Mobile Workstations
The next generation of these mobile workstations have been released. These are based on the latest Intel Kaby Lake mobile Xeon quad core processors with higher clock speeds, and the latest NVIDIA mobile Quadro graphics cards.
Performance Computing LLP works closely with Lenovo. Those who are interested to purchase one of these very high performance Lenovo ThinkPad mobile workstations can contact Performance Computing LLP.
