HP Unveils Eight-Core Workstations
8 Nov, 2007Introduced at a media event cohosted with Intel in San Francisco, the HP xw6600 and HP xw8600 will ship in December.
On Wednesday HP announced the upcoming launch of two eight-core workstations, the HP xw6600 and HP xw8600, which will be powered by two next-generation Quad-Core or Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors.
Introduced at an HP and Intel cohosted media and analyst event in San Francisco, the soon-to-be-released workstations are designed to meet the requirements
 The HP xw8600 workstation will begin shipping in mid-December. |
"Our eight-core HP machine goes beyond what I thought was capable in a workstation," said Jason Pohl, senior designer, Orange County Choppers, a maker of custom-designed motorcycles based in Orange County, New York. "Simultaneously, I can do five SolidWorks designs, several large Photoshop documents, render 3D Studio Max 900,000 polygon models with textures, run Outlook, and access several Web sites while streaming music and video. One more thing: It doesn't miss a beat!"
The eight-core workstations will include two Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5400 series or Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 5200 series. Features also include dual PCI Express Gen2 x16 graphics slots, memory capacity of 128 GB (in the HP xw8600), storage capacity of five terabytes, and support for HP's proprietary Remote Graphics Software.
The xw6600 and xw8600 workstations are expected to begin shipping in mid-December with prices starting around $1,200.
"For an entire year, Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with leading energy-efficient performance have been enabling businesses around the world to work more productively," said Tom Kilroy, vice-president and general manager, Digital Enterprise Group, Intel. "Before the end of 2007, we'll help enable even higher levels of productivity when the new 45-nm Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5400 series and Intel 5400 chipset-based platform deliver breakthrough performance to help improve the processing and visualizing of large amounts of complex data."
At HP and Intel's Quad Core World Tour San Francisco event, customers who have been using the current generation of Quad-Core Intel processors shared best practices and productivity gains, using Experience Centers to demonstrate how the technology has transformed the way they run their businesses.
Wareham, Massachusetts-based Factory Five Racing, a manufacturer of component car kits, uses quad-core technologies to do simultaneous product design and analysis on the same workstation, often using all the cores. Using HP quad-core workstations, Factory Five states that it has experienced a 4x reduction in its design-analysis times.
Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies, a mechanical engineering consulting company, reportedly has been able to cut turnaround time on some simulations to one-tenth of the previous time with quad-core HP workstations running the latest computer-aided engineering simulation tools. The systems also have allowed the company to deliver more accurate computer simulations of products being developed by its customers earlier in the design process, when changes are less expensive.
