LTHOUCH THE MARKET IN WORKSTATIONS ROARED AHEAD IN 1995, the news had ominous undertones for sup- pliers of traditional workstations Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Silicon Graphics have invest- A d heavily in developing both the reduced-instruction-set computer chips and the adaptations of the Unix operating

system that run on them In 1995, they all (and Silicon Graphics in particular) profited handsomely from sales of their stutus- quo systems, but the number of systems they sold did not rise significmtly Instead, a new breed of machines, which for the most part run Microsoft's Windows N T operating system and are based on Intel's Pentium chips, was the market champion

According to a recent report on the worldwide workstation market, shipments of all types of workstations jumped last year by 45 percent-to 1 4 million units But more than one-third of those units were Pentium-based machines, said the source of the report, researcher International Data Corp (IDC) of Framingham, Mass

The low-costhigh-performance desktop systems form the bulk of tho,e classified by IDC as personal workstations Besides the units confimrred with Intel's Pentium as their core processor, a few employ a reduced-instruction set computing (RISC) proces- sor, such a i Digital's Alpha, Silicon Graphics' MIPS, and the Apple-IBM- Motorola PowerPC, on which they run Windows NT (or in a few cases, Unix) About 90 percent of the mar- ket in personal workstations consists of Pentium-based machines and, of those, 80 percent are Windows NT machines while the remainder are Unix boxes

Personal workstations are the fastest-growing segment of the workstation market For every two that shipped in 1994, three shipped in 1995, conversely, ship- ments of traditional RISC-Unix- based units increased only 4 per- cent, Further, IDC predicts that

Workstation wars get personal

Once the bastion of costly Unix workstations, high-performance desktop computing is starting to move to less expensive Windows NT machines

this year's shipments of personal workstations will rise t o 930 000 units and make these units the majority of work- stations being deployed

Overall, US $15 billion worth of workstations were sold throughout the world last year, for a 29 percent increase above 1994 sales And although the rise in the number of traditional units shipped was minor, it was such systems that accounted for half the revenue rise All told, personal units came to only $3 2 billion, or 20 9 percent, of 1995 workstation revenues.

When it announced its preliminary findings in late Janu- ary, IDC distinguished between personal and traditional workstation end-users In 1995, it said, uses of personal units were primarily "commercial professionals," but users of tradi-

tional units were in the technical RICHARD COMERFORD markets. IDC's director of research

Senior Editor Thomas G Copeland pointed out that, through 1996 at least, "tradi-

tional vendors will continue introducing more powerful sys- tems at a remarkable rate and the users will use every improvement in perfomance they can get " For the near future, in his company's view, the personal workstation mar- ket "will continue its rapid growth, primarily in the commer- cial markets, and will make only modest inroads against Unix in the technical markets" But by the end of 1997, IDC acknowledges, the desktop units could well make significant inroads into the core markets for traditional workstations

As the report noted, the fastest-growing sales of trad- itional workstations last year belonged to Silicon Graphics Its unrt sales rose by 39 2 percent, its revenues by 33 9 per- cent, and mechanical computer-aided design (CAD) was its largest single business segment But IDC also noted that the company's particular success was in growing its low-end business in Europe

The personal workstation's birth The term "personal workstation" began to be applied to

Pentium-based machines in 1994 Intergraph Corp , the Huntc,ville, Ala, firm known for its graphics systems, was among the first to latch onto the phrase, which it used that year when introducing three more members of the its TD family These systems were based on the 90-MHz Pentium running DOSiWindows or Windows NT

The TD- 1, the first member of the family, had been in- troduced earlier, in the spring of 1993, and was based on a 486 processor. Its high-performance graphics were de- signed for use in computer-aided design and drafting With its reliance on the Intel architecture and Microsoft Windows, the TD- 1 marked Intergraphs exodus from its own Clipper chips and from sole dependence on Unix In thts company's annual report for its 1995 fiscal year, chief executive officer Jim Meadlock reported that 85 per- cent of its shipments in the fourth quarter were Intel- based, while Windows applications accounted for 48 percent

IEEE SPECTRUM JUNE 1996 0018-9235/96/$5 0001996 IEEE 43

1. Some Windows NT personal workstations

of the company's application-software rev- enues, up from 25 percent in 1993.

In November, Intergraph marched out three new series of personal workstations under the banner of TDZ-3D Graphics Workstations. The TDZ-300, -400, and -600 have either 150- or 200-hlHz Penti- um Pro processors, can be confihwred with one, two, or four central processing units, and run Windows NT

Signiticantly, Intergraph did not aim its workstations solely at nontechnical com- mercial professionals. Last October, the Intergraph Electronics division announ- ced that its personal workstation approach to electronic design automation (EDA)

AST Compaq Dell Digital Manufacturer Research Inc. Computer Computer Equipment

Model Bravo MS-T Deskpro XL Dimensisn Alpha XL 61 50 XPS Pro 266

Processor (clock rate, MHz)

Level 2 cache (kB) Installed-maximum 16-128 RAM (MB) Hard disk (GB) 1.6

Graphics adapter AT1 mach64

(1 50)

Pentium Pro

(200)

256

32-512

2

Matrox Millennium

Alpha 21 064A

(1 50) (266)

2048

16-1 28 32-256

2 12

#9 FX Matrox Motion 71 1 Millennium

Installed-maximum 2 4 2 4 2 4 2-8 graphics RAM (MB)b VRAM WRAM VRAM WRAM

a MIPS chip b VRAM =video RAM, WRAM = window RAM

Gateway 2000 Inc.

G6-2000

32-128

2

N.A.

2 - 4 WRAM

had the support of 18 key vendors of de- sign services tor application-specitic ICs and field-programmable gate arrays (A5 der, Colo )

of January, the division became a separ ate company known as VeriBest Inc Boul-

1994 Personal T Sun Microsvstems

licon Graphics 5.4%

Digital Equipment 6.6%

Total units = 950 745

Total revenues = US 911 789 million

1995 Person a I and traditional workstation market shares

11.2%

Total units = 1 375 656

Total revenues = $15 196 million

Note: Figures exclude "as sold" workstation servers and portable workstations.

Source: International Data Corp.

[l] Research by International Data Corp., Framingham, Mass., shows that a new kind of workstation-the relatively low-cost personal workstation- is winning friends and influencing the market. The next wave of such machines, based on high-speed Pentium Pro processors, may cut into sales of traditional workstations by 1997.

Hewlett- Packard Co. IBM

Vectra XU PC 300

Siemens Nixdorf Informations- Zenith Data

lntergraph NEC systeme AG Systems

TDZ-300 RlSCstation Scenic Celcius 1 Z-STATION GI 3D 2200

VR4400a Pentium Pro

(200) (200) (1 50)

1024 256

32-256 32-1 024 64-25 32-128

Pentium Pro

(200)

256

32-256 32-128

2 2.2

Matrox Matrox Millennium Millennium

2 - 8 4--8 WRAM VRAM

1 1 4 2 4

GLZlT 3D Labs GLiNT 3D Labs GLiNT Diamond 300SX 300SX Stealth64

8 4 8 2 VRAM VRAM VRAM

Other EDA suppliers also backed the personal units. Mentor Graphics Corp., Cadence Design Systems Inc., and a host of other tirms unveiled a range of EDA tools that would allow many electronic design tasks to be done on a personal workstation [see “Sottware applications,” lEEE Spectnrm, January 1996, p. 56-59], But as IDCs Cope- land points out, technical users do not rely on standard packaged software alone, often creating and modifying the software tools inost critical to their business. Porting exist- ing custom tools and Ieaming how to mod- ify packaged ones tor a new environment docs not happen ovemight.

Even the best personal workstations are

no match tor machines at the upper end of today’s workstation spectrum. But they pertorm on a par with the average work- station being sold three to five years ago. So their impact would be felt most at the entry level, where, of course, their pricing makes them extremely attractive

In 1995, according to IIIC, the average price tor a traditional workstation was $17 800 A hlly configured personal work- station-one with a large screen, loads ot memory and disk space, and the latest l’en- tium Pro processor--costs around $8000 on the average, so i f these machines tit an organization’s real computing needs, the savings can be very worthwhile. Further,

Data bus 4

Pentium processor

Control I * 1

] To keep the pipeline of Pentium processors full, a secondary cache intervenes between the dynamic RAM of main memory and the on-chip (primary) cache. The job of backstopping the pri- mary is done by fast static RAMS.

( 0 2 I t K I I ) K I ) ~ ~ O K k l T \ T I ( ) U N \ K ? < i T i ’ f K \ O V \ l

Intel said it expects prices tor I’entiuin system to decline during the year.

Consider, then, the cost of outfitting a team of 10 engineers with computing mus- cle. A budget of $180 000 could s~ipply each technologist with an average-priced traditional workstation. Alternatively, the decision might be to spend $8000 o n an extremely well-outtitted personal worksta- tion tor each ot them and, tor those truly computationally intensive tasks, invest the remaining $ 1 00 ooo i n a very powerful workstation on which applications \vould run in cllendserver fashion. Spend less on the server, and there’s more inoncy t o i l l -

vest in software-a win-win situation. Apparently, the last approach has not yet

taken hold in technical markets I f i t had. the research tirm would have in the number ot traditional workstations sold annually Coupled with the risc i n sale of personal workstations, such a dcclinc would put a squeeze on the profit margins at traditional system manutacturcrs.

The biggest headaches, nonetheless, \vi11 steni trom the Pentium I’ro machines, which have recently begun coming t o mar- ket. (The Intel-based personal workstations counted in the IlX: survey were mainly based on I’entiuin processors.) Taking Ies- sons trom earlier KISC designs, tht. I’en- tium Pro is aggressively supcrscalar, Iieing able to process three instructions at a time vcrs~is the f’entiuni’s two. I t 15 designed t o run at very high clock rates and t o keep its pipelines hill hv shuttling the order of instructions, setting aside those that can not be processed imnicdiatcly and pcr- torming the rest out ot order.

Floating-point processing is the strong right arm ot mechanical computing, and in this respect the I’cntiuni Pro is tar supe- rior t o the Pcntiuni. For one thing, its floating-point unit is tully pipelined so i t

can work much more quickly when per- fomiing consecutive floating-point opcra- tions. For another, dynamic execution al- lows it t o pertorm other operations whilc the tloating-point unit is occupied T) top things oft, its dedicated tloating-point cx- change unit permits access to anv stacked item without incurring latencies, and so overcomes the 80x86’s problem\ with the stack-based model

Still hirthcr enhancing the performance ot Pentium Prtrbased systems is their usc ot second-level cache, in the guise of fast stat-

4 5

raditional workstations have always been the territo- ry of the technical professional looking for the best performance (and a t the right price, of course). At the

heart of the business has been a common set of performance measurements.

Since 1989, this market has relied upon the Standard Per- formance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC), Manassas, Va., for bench- marking systems to make realistic comparisons possible. All the same, workstation manufacturers have found "creative" ways of performing tests so as to show off their systems in the best light. But in late August '95, SPEC released a new suite of benchmarks that prevent such rigging.

As in the past, there are two sets of benchmarks: CINT95 for measuring performance on integer calculations and CFP95 for checking floating-point operations. The former consists of eight segments while the latter consists of 10 [see table].

Every program in these sets i s larger than before-too large to be crammed into a commercial RlSC processor's inter- nal cache. They therefore exercise the way in which a proces- sor communicates with external memory.

To claim SPEC performance, measurements must be per- formed in the new tool environment that is part of the new benchmarking software. This setup ensures that all results have been obtained in a similar environment, preventing sup- pliers from using handcrafted binary files or invoking special cases. Also, the tools calculate results automatically, based on a median time for a series of runs, so a supplier cannot quote just the one instance out of hundreds where everything went well. In fact, the tools control most of the process, leaving lit- tle leeway for customizing performance to improve results.

There is a hitch, even so. While SPEC95 is a vastly improved and more nearly level playing field, it is based on Unix, as a

ic RAMs from companies such as Motorola Inc.< Microprocessor and Memory Tech- nologies Group, Austin, Texas. Fast static RAMs are employed for such caches in new system designs [Fig. 21 to minimize stalls in the pipelines due to misses in the Pentium Pro's primary on-chip caches. Most of the current Pentium Pro systems are equipped with 256kB level-2 caches, but even larger ones are possible. While the Pentium Pro is not, strictly speaking, a RlSC processor, its in-system performance certainly makes it look like one

Graphics hardware for Pentium mach- ines, such as the Millennium graphics ac- celerator from Matrox Graphics Inc., Que- bec, Canada, cover a wide market base. Thus they can be more cost effective than the proprietary graphics systems custom- designed for workstations.

Then, too, these systems are significant in that they are relying on Windows NT, not Windows '95 or 3.1, nor DOS. NT's development team was headed by Dave Cutler, who developed the VMS operat- ing system for VAX minicomputers at Dig- ital. His experience with that project influ- enced NTs design as a professional com-

look at the program components of CINT95 and CFP95 shows. In trying out personal workstations, the only way to use the SPEC benchmarks is to run a Unix operating system, such as Unixware. And that is what vendors are doing. Digital, for in- stance, quotes the SPEC marks for i t s Celebris line of Pentium Pro personal workstations, noting that Unix was used.

Windows NT machines are characterized with a number of traditional PC benchmarks. A popular one is the SYSmark from Business Applications Performance Corp. (BAPCo), Santa Clara, Calif. Like SPEC, BAPCo is a nonprofit corporation formed to promote a common, industrywide method for objectively eval- uating the performance of computers-in i ts case, PCs.

Released last July, SYSmark for Windows NT is designed around standard 32-bit applications widely used in business: word processing (Microsoft Word), spreadsheets (Excel), and presentation graphics (PowerPoint). But it includes Orcad Max- EDA for circuit-board design, so it has a technical component.

While SYSmark may be fine for a basic evaluation of Windows NT machines, there is no crossover to the world of Unix. SPEC has considered the possibility of porting i t s bench- marks to Windows NT; but before it can convince i t s mem- bership (mostly workstation manufacturers) that the move would be welcome, it needs to hear from the technical user community. Those with opinions to offer can contact SPEC on the World Wide Web (http://www.specbench.org/). by e-mail (info@ specbench.org), by phone (703-331-0180), or in writing (SPEC, 10754 Ambassador Dr., Suite 201, Manassas, VA 221 10).

But for now, there i s no standard way to answer the ques- tion "How does the performance of processor X running Unix compare to that of processor Y running Windows NT?" Hope- fully, it will be the technical community's next step to find a way of answering that. -R.C.

puting system, and many today see Win- dows NT as the successor not only to VMS but to Unix as well I f Windows NT has a significant weakness with respect to Unix in today's workstation market, i t is that Unix has already moved into the 64-bit realm needed tor the highest work- station performance, and Windows NT has not But it IS not a weakness that cannot be overcome when Microsoft feels it is time

Traditionalists Not surprisingly, then, three manufac-

turers ot traditional workstations-Digital, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM-are making ready for any possibility and are tielding Pro systems that could compete with workstations proper. But Sun Microsys- tems, the volume leader, and Silicon Graphics, the fastest-growing in the group, have not joined them.

Digital Equipment Corp., Maynard, Mass., was the first to openly adopt the personal workstation moniker for a line of systems, but with a unique twist. In its XL series of personal units, thanks to their motherboarddaughterboard design, users can migrate trom Pentium to Alpha pro-

~e5sor5, all running Window5 NT. T h c Celebris XL line was originally introduced in March 1995, replacing the IlECpc XL line with Pentium-based machines, and in November new systems were introduced based on the l'entiuni Pro XL models us- ing the Alpha processor arc known 3s

Alpha XL machines, and peripherals and the like can migrate between tnachines. T ~ L I S for Digital, the term "personal work- station" reters to an entrylevel system that nins Windows NT, but need not have a Pentium Pro chip i n its innards.

Hewlctt-f'ackard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., ha5 not yet wed the term "personal work- station" in describing any of its computer lines. But last November its HP Vectra tamily of PCs welcomed two new mem- bers based on the 150-MHz Pentium: the uniprocessor VT hll50 and the dual pro- cessor XU 6/150. At the time, Jim Allchin, senior vice president of HP's business sys- tems division, positioned the units as "ex- cellent machines for the Windows NT Workstation user." In the XU system, HI' innovatively used 64-bit dual in-line memory modules to create a 128-bit-wide data path to speed pertormance, and went

46

Benchmark suite name Names

INTEGER BENCHMARKS

CINT95 099.90

124.m88ksim

126.gcc

129.compress

130.li

132.ijpeg

134.perl

147.vortex

FLOATING-POINT BENCHMARKS

CFP95 101 .tomcatv

1 O2.swim

103.su2cor

104.hydro2d

107.mgrid

1 l0.applu

125.turb3d

141 .apsi

145.fpppp:

146.wave

ark terminology Component program

Descriptions Benchmark measurementsa

An internationally ranked "Go" playing program

A chip simulator for the Motorola 88100 microprocessor

Based on GNU C comder version 2.5.3

SPECint95: the geometric mean of eight normalized ratios (one for each integer benchmark) when the benchmarks are compiled using aggressive optimization.

SPECint-base95: same as above, except that An in-memory version of the common Unix utility conservative optimization is used,

Xlisp interpreter

Image compressiorJd"w~i0n on inmemory images

SPECint-rate95: the geometric mean of eight normalized throughput ratios when the benchmarks are compiled using aggressive Optimization.

An interpreter for the Per1 language

An object-oriented database

SPECint-ratecbase95: same as above, except that conservative optimization is used.

A mesh-generation program

Shallow water model

Monte-Carlo simulation for elementary particles

Navier Stokes equations

A multiple-grid solver in 3-D potential field

Partial differential equations

Turbulence modeling

Weather prediction

From Gaussian series of quantum chemistry benchmarks

Maxwell's equations

SPECfp95: the geometric mean of 10 normalized ratios (one for each floating-point benchmark) when the benchmarks are compiled using aggressive optimization.

SPECfp-base95: same as above, except that conservative optimization is used.

SPECfp-rate95: the geometric mean of 10 normalized throughput ratios when the benchmarks are compiled using aggressive optimization.

SPECfp-rate-base95: same as above, except that COnservative optimization is used.

dThe ratio for each benchmark is calculated by dividing a reference time determined by SPEC by the benchmark's actual run time Source: Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.

with its own motherboard design, rather than buying motherboards from Intel.

Early this year, the Vectra family added systems based on 180- and 200-MHz pro- cessors, and HP has consistently lowered prices on the Vectra line to make sure it stays at the forefront of the price-perfor- mance curve. But unlike Digital, the com- pany maintains a clear distinction between its PA-RISC-based workstations and its personal computers. This may change when joint work with Intel on processor design bears fruit in the next two years

IBM Corp., too, keeps a clear dividing line between its workstation and person- al computers, its Pentium machines are part of the Personal Computer 300 and 700 family of commercial desktop com- puters. At the end of March, IBM re- leased its first Pentium Pro machines, based on the 200-MHz version of the pro- cessor. Although the system supports Windows NT, IBM itself offers to pre- load only OSi2 Warp, DOS 6, or Win- dows 3.1. Its version of Unix, AIX OS, is not an option, that remains in the RSi6000 workstation camp.

Sun hlicrosystems, sticking with its own Sparc and Solaris technology, offers nei- ther Pentium nor Windows NT in its prod- uct line. Nor does Silicon Graphics, though in a sense it started the personal workstation market three years ago, when it introduced the low-cost lndy worksta- tions-this despite the fact that its sub- sidiary, MIPS Technologies Inc., Mountain View, Calif., provided one of the first RlSC architectures to support Windows NT.

Indeed, a good number of MIPS cus- tomers offer Windows NT machines, among them NEC Technologies Inc. Its RlSCstation 2200 is aimed both at the computer-aided manufacturing and design markets and at those software developers who specialize in technical applications.

But to traditional PC manufacturers, the new class of workstations represents an opportunity to expand their sales volumes and market shares. Hence the likes of AST, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and Zenith have been quick to field Pentium Pro-based systems and to offer them in the technical arena [see table, pp. 44-45]. This month, when the Design Automation Conference

is held in La5 Vegas, Nev., it will not be surprising to 5ee machines from these ven- dors being used to demonstrate the latest Windows NT EDA applications. +

To probe further At the time that this article was going to

press, International Data Corp. was about to make its full report on the workstation market available to its clients. To find out how to obtain this information, contact IDC, Five Speen Street, Framingham, MA 01701; 508-872-8200, fax 508-935-401 5; e- mail idcinfo@idcresearch.com.

All the system suppliers mentioned in this report make the specifications for their personal workstations available through the World Wide Web. Particularly note- worthy is Gateway 2000 Inc.'s Web site, (http://www.gw2k.com/), which lets the visitor configure the system he or she de- sires using a Web form and thereby deter- mine its price. Any Web site relevant to this article can be accessed via live links from i t s on-line version found in the IEEE members section of /E€€ Spectrum's Web site (http:// www.spectrum.ieee.org/),

C Ohl tKkOKU ~ U: OKK5TATION N'AK5 LET PEK5ONAL 47