Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/612975
24 cgw n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 he workstation mar- ket has had a few ups and downs, but noth- ing like those in the consumer or commercial PC market. In fact, the workstation market has been relatively stable – not recession-proof, but no wild swings, either. The workstation market is segmented into five major cate- gories (entry, low-mid, high-mid, high-end, and mobile), plus virtualized workstations. The very expensive, very powerful high-end workstations have a very steady but low growth. These are mission-critical ma- chines that have to be the most reliable, have the most memory, contain the highest-perfor- mance CPUs and workstation graphics boards, sport the larg- est screens, and ship with the most reliable power supplies. The fastest-growing segment in the workstation market has been, and will continue to be, the entry-level, followed by mobile workstations. The new genera- tion of mobile workstations with screens from 15½ inches to 17 inches also includes high-per- formance GPU's large local memory arrays and, typically, high-capacity, high-speed SSDs. As might be expected, the entry-level is the highest volume, which is traditional in any market segment. Entry-level worksta- tions today are an extraordinary value but do have limitations with regard to CPU speed, GPU speed, and memory capacity. The mid-range workstation market, which has typically been units with dual CPUs, has been declining as CPUs in gen- eral have become more power- ful, thus eliminating the need for a second CPU. However, there are certain applications that do require a second CPU, and although some users who have bought mid-range machines in the past can now satisfy their needs with an entry-lev- el machine, there are others who simply cannot give up the dual-CPU capability. Workstations are used in mission-critical applications, and oen by two or more shis. The major applications for workstations have been manufacturing and design, with media and entertainment second. And although finance doesn't need the same level of graphics performance as design, the financial analyst users want a rock-solid machine and, therefore, gravitate toward workstations. Some users fail to differen- tiate between a workstation and a PC, but there are major differences. Workstations tend to be more fault-tolerant than PCs, oen using ECC RAM as well as different classes of processors – for instance, CPU and GPU. Differences in terms of temperature range, clock speed, and cooling are all considerations in designing a reliable, stable machine like a workstation. Workstations also offer better and easier service- ability over a PC. Workstation CPUs have larger caches, more cores, and the ability to access very large arrays of RAM. M A R K E T N U M B E R S Aer a surprisingly painful first quarter, stakeholders in the markets for workstations and professional GPUs were looking for far healthier results in Q2 '15, along with reassurance that the market's fortunes were not following the downward path of the broader PC industry. Ultimately, they got both, as the industry breathed a collective sigh of relief over a significant rebound in shipment volume. All told, the industry shipped approximately 1.02 million work- stations in the second quar- ter, equating to a gain of 11.5 percent over Q1 and bringing volume back to Q4 '14 levels. Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has been emphasizing that the workstation market is not subject to the same forces that have been decimating the THE NEW BREED OF WORKSTATIONS FUELS GROWTH WHILE DELIVERING GREAT PERFORMANCE BY JON PEDDIE The Workstation Market Continues to Surprise and Delight T "Requiem for Industry" by Kazuhiko Nakamura