Millennium Wave
Possible collision of PCs and workstations
Lee Ting Ting
01/05/2000
The New Straits Times
2*
Page 11
(Copyright 2000)
ADVANCES in computing technology is one reason that personal computers (PCs) and workstations continuously undergo interesting periods of transition, such as now.
As the commercial focal point of both the hardware and software industries, developments within the PC and workstation markets are indeed important guides for vendors strategising for the future.
PC or workstation?
A major issue currently dominating the computing arena is the classification of high-end PCs and workstations. As technological improvements and economies of scale result in very powerful yet affordable high-end PCs, users now have cheaper alternative of accomplishing workstation performance.
According to Phil Patel, Dell Asia-Pacific Sdn Bhd's director of Dell Precision workstations, 'workstation' and 'desktop PC' are just marketing terms now. "The workstation is just an extension of the PC desktop line," he says.
This declaration echoes the current marketing stance of some major PC vendors such as Gateway, Dell, and Compaq, which are competing head on with traditional workstation vendors such as Sun, SGI, and IBM.
Conventionally, there are distinct differences between PCs and workstations. Workstations have technically more superior engine and architecture; can be powered by up to four super fast microprocessors; boast huge storage, memory bandwidth, intensive graphics capabilities; and exhibit firm system stability to run highly complex industrial applications.
High-end PCs, on the other hand, are a class lower: They have sufficient capabilities to cater to the demanding requirements of end users, but not to the demands of commercial workstation users.
Despite the introduction of more powerful Intel Pentium processors and significant improvements in storage, graphics display, and bandwidth capabilities in high-end PCs - upon which some vendors market their PC offerings as workstations - many still feel that there will always be a technology gap between high-end PCs and workstations.
"If the technology of high-end PCs improve by 50 per cent, workstations will also improve by the same rate," illustrates a local Hewlett-Packard product manager on the fact that high-end PCs will never catch up with the workstation in terms of power and functionality.
Apparently, only workstations can provide the necessary environment to run specific industrial applications such as engineering and computer- aided design (CAD), digital content creation, and complex financial and stock market analysis software.
Moreover, there will always be a market demand for both classes of machines. "Users will continue their computing innovations at different levels," says Ashok Desai, SGI Asia-Pacific's director of enterprise solution business.
LINUX'S RISE Developments within the operating system (OS) industry is also contributing to the closing gap between high-end PCs and workstations.
Industry analysts' reports over the past two years indicated that the lower tier of the Unix workstation market is quickly being replaced by Windows NT-based machines.
According to a report by International Data Corp (IDC), there are about 1.7 million installed NT workstations worldwide as compared to 0.6 million installed Unix units to date. IDC also predicts a worldwide NT workstation compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3 per cent from 1998 to 2003.
Among the key factors that are expected to fuel the growth of the NT- based workstation market are the launch of Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip, the introduction of Microsoft Windows 2000 (formerly NT 5), price per performance gains, and high-end PC vendors' increasing partnerships with independent software vendors.
And as though the stronghold of existing Unix OSes within the workstation market is not sufficiently corroded, rising OS star Linux is slowly but steadily gaining recognition in the high-end PC and workstation markets.
Linux's ease of use, much touted stability, and free availability are three main reasons that some PC and workstation vendors are looking at this OS.
The focus of major Unix software developers on Linux is also looked upon as a boost to this OS. When asked about their future product strategy, about 90 per cent of Unix application developers indicated an interest in Linux.
Despite these Unix-threatening developments, reports show that Unix is still a force within the workstation market. IDC forecasts that the Unix workstation market will reduce by a CAGR of only 5.1 per cent in unit shipments through 2003, and that Unix-based workstation worldwide revenues in 1998 made up 52 per cent of the total workstation revenues although their shipments contributed to only 25 per cent of the total workstation units shipped.
Unix workstation vendors are also expected to lower their price points or add some kind of value to their offerings to compete against cheaper NT workstations.
BETTER FEATURES Flawless liquid crystal displays (LCDs), better graphic pipelines, beefy storage, new memory systems, digital versatile disk-rewritable (DVD-RW) drives, and biometric security identification are some high-end PC and workstation traits for the near future.
Intel is also expected to release its Coppermine processor family which comprise 15 new Pentium III chips (up to 733 megahertz), new 820 chipsets that will allow PCs to use Rambus memory, and 840 chipsets for workstations.
The dawn of the new millennium will also see facelifts in PCs and workstations. Led by Apple's colourful iMacs, the long reigning concept of plain beige-coloured PCs is quickly fading away. More and more PCs are also sporting flat panels and sleek casings. While in the past, people compared their computer's status symbols according to its specifications, there is now a new-found emphasis on style.
This trend will be widely seen as vendors increasingly seek to differentiate their offerings by style in addition to technology. |
