Workstation Workhorses

Well, workstation manufacturers sat up and noticed, so don't count them out yet. In the past year, primary workstation vendors have made a number of changes to bolster their product lines and position workstations as the premier choice for high-end desktop computing. For example, Sun Microsystems launched its Sun Blade 1000 last March, an entry-level RISC/Unix-based workstation powered by Sun's UltraSPARC II processor. Last May, Hewlett-Packard dropped its workstation brands, Kayak and Visualize, and debuted HP Workstations. It also increased the power. And around that time, Intel launched its high-end 64-bit Itanium processors for workstations.

Those efforts appear to be paying off. Today, Gartner's

market research shows the decline of worldwide workstation shipments slowed in the third quarter of 2001, falling just 1.6 percent from the second quarter, while vendors pulled in $1.4 billion. During a recession, that's major progress.

Faster Than a Speeding Sun?

IBM believes its newest workstation line will do nothing less than transform high-end desktop computing. Blue Blue says that, according to benchmark comparisons, its IntelliStation line, which is compatible with Unix, Linux and Windows-based systems, offers two-and-one-half times faster graphics performance than Sun's fastest workstation.

IBM has aligned its Intel-processor-based workstations with its Unix workstations, which run IBM's version of Unix,AIX,and are driven by IBM's Power processor. The IntelliStation Power Model 265 for Unix contains one or two 450-MHz, 64-bit POWER3 microprocessors, 512 MB to 8 GB of ECC memory, five PCI slots, integrated dual 10/100 Ethernet ports, three serial ports and one parallel port, and two AC power supplies, plus an optional redundant power supply. The workstation includes IBM Project eLiza technology, which provides self-healing capabilities, along with increased reliability and manageability.

The IntelliStation Pro Series workstations are now powered by Intel Pentium 4 and Xeon processors at 2.2 GHz with enhanced 512-KB L2 cache. IBM has launched the IntelliStation E Pro 6204 and 6214,entry-level workstations in a small desktop form,along with the midrange IntelliStation M Pro 6229 and higher-end IntelliStation M Pro 6850, both towers.

The new IntelliStation family also features the latest IBM video monitors. Both workstation lines are available with the IBM T210 flat-panel monitor, which provides super-clear and refined images at resolutions of 3,145,728 pixels. IBM also says the new monitors allow the T210 images to maintain their sharpness when viewed from oblique angles and head-on.

The IntelliStation Power Model 265 includes the new IBM GXT6500P or GXT4500P graphics cards. The Intelli-

Station Pro workstation features compatibility with a new line of 2D and 3D graphics adapters from 3Dlabs, ATI Technologies, Matrox and Nvidia, which offer enhanced visualization and image manipulation for high-end design.

IBM continues to step up its support of Linux by offering the open-source OS for the IntelliStation. IBM says all IntelliStation Pro workstations have been internally or independently tested and certified for Linux compatibility and performance. IBM officials say the company will offer the same level of Linux support on the workstation as it does with Microsoft Windows and Unix environments.

John Holz, vice president of IBM workstations, says the new line of workstations gives IBM the range to address the entire market "from the entry-level to the most powerful models."

Look out PCs, here come the workstations.