A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but most commonly refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT, and IBM beginning in the 1980s, and powered the 3D computer graphics revolution through the late 1990s.
At the peak of their popularity, workstations offered higher performance specifications than mainstream personal computers, especially in terms of processing, graphics, memory, and multitasking. Workstations are optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulations like computational fluid dynamics, animation, video editing, image editing, medical imaging, image rendering, computational science, generating mathematical plots, and software development. Typically, the form factor is that of a desktop computer, which consists of a high-resolution display, a keyboard, and a mouse at a minimum. The form factor can also offer multiple displays, graphics tablets, and 3D mice for manipulating objects and navigating scenes. Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories, and collaboration tools like videoconferencing.
The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs since the late 1990s have reduced the distinction between PCs and workstations. Typical 1980s and 1990s workstations had expensive proprietary hardware and operating systems to categorically distinguish from standardized PCs; most had RISC-based processors and ran UNIX-based operating systems, but by the early 2000s, workstation offerings shifted to highly commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as Dell, HP Inc., and Fujitsu, selling x86-64 systems running Windows or Linux.
History
Origins and development Workstations predate the first personal computer (PC). The first computer that might qualify as a workstation was the IBM 1620, codenamed "CADET", a small scientific computer designed to be used interactively by a single person sitting at the console. It was introduced in 1959. One peculiar feature of this machine was that it lacked any arithmetic circuitry. To perform addition, it required a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This reduced the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive. It was initially rented for $1000 per month.
In 1965, the 1620 was succeeded by the IBM 1130 scientific computer. Built into roughly desk-sized cabinets with console typewriters, they could be configured with optional add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punch-card I/O.
Early workstations were generally dedicated minicomputers, a multiuser system repurposed for a single user. For example, the PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), is regarded as the first commercial minicomputer.
Workstations have historically been more advanced than contemporary PCs, with more powerful CPU architectures, more advanced graphics, more memory, and multitasking with sophisticated operating systems like Unix. They typically offered networking as a standard capability, long before this became prevalent in personal computing. Because of their minicomputer heritage, workstations since their introduction have supported professional and expensive software such as CAD and graphics design, as opposed to PCs' games and text editors. The Lisp machines developed at MIT in the early 1970s pioneered some workstation principles, as high-performance, networked, single-user systems intended for heavily interactive use. Lisp machines were commercialized beginning in 1980 by companies such as Symbolics, Lisp Machines, Texas Instruments (the TI Explorer), and Xerox (the Interlisp-D workstations). The first computer designed for a single user, with high-resolution graphics (and so a workstation in the modern sense), was the Alto developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. Other early workstations include the Terak 8510/a (1977), Three Rivers PERQ (1979), and the later Xerox Star (1981).
1980s: rise in popularity In the early 1980s, with the advent of 32-bit microprocessors such as the Motorola 68000, several new competitors appeared, including Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems, with workstations based on the 68000 and Unix. DARPA's VLSI Project created several graphic workstations, such as the Silicon Graphics 3130. Workstation vendors began to adopt RISC CPUs in the mid to late 1980s. Competition among RISC vendors lowered CPU prices to as little as $10 per MIPS, much less expensive than the Intel 80386; after large price cuts in 1987 and 1988, a personal workstation suitable for 2D CAD costing $5,000 to $25,000 (equivalent to $ to $ in ) was available from multiple vendors. Mid-range models capable of 3D graphics cost from $35,000 to $60,000 (equivalent to $ to $ in ), and high-end models overlapping with minicomputers cost from $80,000 to $100,000 (equivalent to $ to $ or more).
InfoWorld in 1989 described Sun as "the unquestioned leader in the workstation arena". It and other RISC workstation vendors like Hewlett-Packard (HP) were very successful in luring customers from traditional minicomputer companies like DEC and Data General with more performance per dollar, forcing them to release their own workstations that year. Apollo said that systems costing less than were half of all workstation sales. At that time, a "personal workstation" might be a high-end device like the Macintosh II or IBM PS/2 Model 80, or a low-end or hybrid device like the NeXT Computer, all with similar, overlapping specifications. Workstation prices were declining by 20% annually; the Apollo DN2500 cost as little as , which an industry analyst said was the "magic price point" where customers would consider workstations over PCs. BYTE predicted "Soon, the only way we'll be able to tell the difference between traditional workstations and PCs will be by the operating system they run", with the former running Unix and the latter running OS/2, classic Mac OS, and/or Unix. Many workstations by then had some method to run increasingly popular and powerful PC software such as Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Word. Another differentiator between PC and workstation was that the latter was much more likely to have a graphics accelerator with support for a graphics standard like PHIGS or X Window, while the former usually depended on software rendering or proprietary accelerators. The computer animation industry's needs typically caused improvements in graphical technology, with CAD using the same improvements later. BYTE demonstrated that year that an individual could build a workstation with commodity components with specifications comparable to commercially available low-end workstations.
By 1990, when IBM announced the RS/6000, workstations were the fastest-growing segment of the PC market. Competition decreased prices so quickly that Gartner Group that year advised depreciation for Unix RISC systems of 45% or more annually, twice the normal rate. Workstations often featured SCSI or Fibre Channel disk storage systems, high-end 3D accelerators, single or multiple 64-bit processors, large amounts of RAM, and well-designed cooling. Additionally, the companies that make the products tend to have comprehensive repair/replacement plans. As the distinction between workstation and PC fades, however, workstation manufacturers have increasingly employed "off-the-shelf" PC components and graphics solutions rather than proprietary hardware or software. Some "low-cost" workstations are still expensive by PC standards but offer binary compatibility with higher-end workstations and servers made by the same vendor. This allows software development to take place on low-cost (relative to the server) desktop machines.
Thin clients Workstations diversified to the lowest possible price point as opposed to performance, called the thin client or network computer. Dependent upon a network and server, this reduces the machine to having no hard drive, and only the CPU, keyboard, mouse, and screen. Some diskless nodes still run a traditional operating system and perform computations locally, with storage on a remote server. These are intended to reduce the initial system purchase cost, and the total cost of ownership, by reducing the amount of administration required per user.
This approach was first attempted as a replacement for PCs in office productivity applications, with the 3Station by 3Com. In the 1990s, X terminals filled a similar role for technical computing. Sun's thin clients included the Sun Ray product line. However, purchasing and managing traditional workstations and PCs continued to drop in price and complexity as remote management tools for IT staff became available, undercutting this market.
3M computer
In the early 1980s, the target for high-end workstations was the "3M computer", as defined by Raj Reddy: a megabyte of memory, a megapixel display (roughly 1000×1000 pixels), and one mega-instruction per second processor (at least one million floating-point operations per second). This was at least one order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of the time. The original 1981 IBM Personal Computer had 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around ( with the optional 8087 math coprocessor).
Another goal was to bring the price below 1 megapenny (10,000 dollars), which was achieved in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many high end workstations cost from to or more.
Other features beyond the typical personal computer of the time included networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses.
Decline The increasing adoption of key technologies into mainstream PCs was a direct factor in the decline of the workstation as a separate market segment:
Reliable components High-performance 3D graphics hardware for computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation became increasingly popular in the PC market around the mid-to-late 1990s, mostly driven by computer gaming, yielding the first official GPU in Nvidia's NV10 and the breakthrough GeForce 256. High-performance CPUs: the first RISC CPUs of the early 1980s offered roughly one order of magnitude in performance improvement over CISC processors of comparable cost. Intel's x86 CISC family always had the edge in market share and the economies of scale that this implied. By the mid-1990s, some CISC processors like the Motorola 68040 and Intel's 80486 and Pentium have performance parity with RISC in some areas, such as integer performance (at the cost of greater chip complexity) and hardware floating-point calculations, relegating RISC to even more high-end markets. Hardware support for floating-point operations: optional on the original IBM PC; remained on a separate chip for Intel systems until the 80486DX processor. Even then, x86 floating-point performance lagged other processors due to limitations in its architecture. Even low-price PCs have long offered performance in the gigaFLOPS range.