HP Rolls Out Blade Workstations For MCAD Market
Based on HP's BladeSystem infrastructure, the product is designed to speed up the MCAD design process by improving worker productivity and collaboration, and helps meet customer and regulatory mandates for highly secure data protection. The product also allows users to consolidate databases, set up remote offices and provides shared access to MCAD applications, HP said.
According to the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, users can seamlessly access CATIA, Siemens UGS NX, PTC Pro/ENGINEER, Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks and MicroStation, as well as related applications such as Autodesk Revit, which can be run securely on blade workstations in the data center.
"Centralizing computing power in the data center and allowing remote access from most any location can allow engineers to improve collaboration with their peers and clients, creating optimal levels of productivity and security while reducing overall IT costs," said Jeff Groudan, vice president of marketing, Desktop Solutions Organization in a statement.
The HP blade workstation, which executes user applications and resides in the data center, can be configured with one or two high-speed Intel Xeon dual-core or quad-core processors and a dedicated NVIDIA FX 1600M hardware graphics card that computes and renders the interactive desktop image.
The interactive desktop image is sent via HP Remote Graphics Software (RGS), an advanced network utility. The image also delivers real-time interactive access to MCAD application users, regardless of location. RGS works seamlessly, over a standard computer network, with applications such as 2D design, 3D solid modeling, rendering, simulation and video animation.
The architecture provides interactive remote access to HP workstation-class computing and visualization power in addition to high-speed, encrypted image transfer through standard LAN, WAN or VPN connections to almost any access device, including HP thin client devices, Microsoft Windows-based workstations, PCs or notebooks.