Taking advantage of the new eight-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) has updated its Z Series workstations with three new models for users from oil and gas and animation to architecture and photography.
Following the launch of the Z1, HP’s first all-in-one workstation at the vendor’s partner conference last month, HP launched three updated tower workstations this week coinciding with the launch of Intel’s eight-core Xeon chips: the Z820, Z620 and Z420, which update the Z800, Z600 and Z400 respectively.
“We’re recommitting to providing leadership in the industry for our workstation customers,” said Jim Zafarana, vice-president and general manager of the commercial solutions business unit for HP. “These three products are infused with the latest technology capabilities in the industry, and more innovations driven by the needs we’ve heard from our customers.”
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The high-end offering is the Z820, aimed at customers in industries such as oil and gas, computer-aided design, mechanical computer-aided design, video and animation with particularly demanding compute-intensive visualization needs. It offers up to 16 processing cores, 512GB of ECC memory, up to 14TB of storage and dual Nvidia Quadro 6000 graphics.
“This is our no-compromise, ultimate Z workstation with expanded performance, memory and features,” said Zafarana.
The Z620 is designed for quieter environments where space is more of an issue, such as the financial trading sector. The mid-range workstation has been updated to support both single and dual-socked processors and up to 16 processing cores, along with 96GB of ECC memory, up to 11TB storage and up to NVIDIA Quadro 6000 or dual NVIDIA Quadro 5000 graphics.
“The Z620 has really been transformed,” said Zafarana. “We’re going to be able to achieve new and lower price points. We’re creating a more versatile platform to broaden its market reach,”
Finally, the Z420 is designed for mainstream computing and visualization customers in CAD, architecture, video editing and photography. It supports up to eight processing cores using Intel Xeon E501600 and E5-2600 processors, with up to 64GB of ECC memory, 11TB of storage and up to NVIDIA Quadro 6000 or dual NVIDIA Quadro 5000 graphics.
“Across all these products you’ll see elements of environmental leadership, acoustic innovations and performance improvements,” said Zafarana.
Those innovations include 90 per cent efficient power supplies and BFR/PVC-free configurations. The workstations are also 90 per cent recyclable by weight.
Workstation customers will also benefit from four-channel memory said Ira Weiss, workstations business manager with HP Canada, which allows more memory to get to the processor faster. And with more cores, multi-threaded applications will be able to get up to 32 threads in a dual processor system.
“Key commercial applications around CAD and video editing are now using all those threads to maximize what we can get through the processor,” said Weiss.
With a well-established workstation market in Canada, Weiss said the new workstations offer an opportunity for partners to have a conversation with their clients about their specific and unique computing needs.
“They really need to understand the applications their customers are using,” said Weiss. “Understand the work the customers do and the applications they want to run, and address what the best workstation is for their needs. We have tools to help partners figure out which workstation is right for which customer.”
The new models begin shipping in April. Canadian pricing is not yet available.
Follow Jeff Jedras on Twitter: @JeffJedrasCDN.
