Sponsor Spotlight: Small but Mighty
As processor technology marches onward, you can be sure that HP will be there, putting the best of the best technologies at your fingertips to drive your mission-critical Autodesk applications. The arrival of the latest Intel Xeon 5600 series and Intel Core i3 and i5 quad-core processors marks another boost in available processing power and efficiency. HP has put these latest processors into its Z-series workstations, including the new HP Z200 SFF (Small Form Factor), a new workstation option for those with challenging desk space.
The new HP Z200 SFF is small, designed for those with truly tight workspaces, the unit measures only 13.3 x 3.95 x 15.0 in, and in either desktop or mini-tower orientation, it takes up about as much space as a hardcover dictionary or atlas and practically disappears on your desk, leaving you room for more important things.
Diminutive size doesn’t mean compromised performance, however. The Z200 SFF is available with your choice of Intel Core i3, i5 dual-core or Intel Xeon 3400 series quad-core processors, up to 16 GB of memory and a choice of integrated or professional 2D and Entry level 3D graphics options from NVIDIA. A variety of hard drive, optical drive, and plenty of USB ports ensure sufficient expandability to meet the needs of most AutoCAD users. Of course the Z200 SFF also features the HP extras that users have come to depend upon, especially the intangibles like world-class HP testing and ISV certifications as well as more tangible extras such as HP SkyRoom visual collaboration software and the HP Performance Advisor.
32 nm Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series debuts in Z-Series Workstations
Multi-threaded workstation applications draw a lot of computing resources and HP has stepped up to the plate by adding the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series processors (code-named Westmere) to the HP Z400, Z600 and Z800 workstations. With 6 cores per processor, these Z-series workstations offer up to 12 cores to address your most complex applications such as 3D engineering models, simulations, digital prototyping and architectural modeling. Combined with Intel HyperThreading technology, this provides up to 24 separate threads, providing greater parallelism for true “megatasking.”
“The new Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series runs multithreaded workstation applications up to 45 percent faster than its predecessor, the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series,” said Anthony Neal-Graves, general manager, Workstations, Intel. “Workstations powered by the new Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series give application developers the reliability, capacity and performance to help them bring innovative ideas to life faster than ever before.”
A raw performance boost is only one of the improvements brought along by Intel Westmere processors. The 32 nm process also requires less energy to perform the same work. Less energy consumed, means less heat generated. Less heat, means less energy is needed for thermal management, which in turn leads to even greater energy efficiency. This improves the green factor in HP Z-series workstations without sacrificing performance and reliability.
Xeon 5600 processors in the Z-series workstations also provide additional security through two new features, the Advanced Encryption Standard-New Instructions (AES-NI) for faster encryption, as well as Intel's TXT (Trusted Execution Transaction) technology to secure data being moved through virtual environments. This is ever more important as we work together over broader geographies, through virtual networks and other similar technologies. Collaboration becomes safer, more secure and more reliable.
HP workstations are used by the world’s most demanding power users in industries such as graphic arts, computer animation, computer-aided design (CAD), and engineering. Companies use HP workstations to design everything from running shoes to race cars, animated characters to deep-sea submersibles. Autodesk develops and tests its solutions on HP workstations, depending upon the stability, performance and precision tuning of HP workstations to test the limits of performance and effectiveness.
With these new offerings from HP, Autodesk users have even more options for powerful, efficient, workstation platforms from the entry level, all the way up to the most demanding, most compute intensive power users.
For more information about HP’s Z-series workstations, click here.
