If you’re a demanding computer user, sometimes your 13-inch Ultrabook laptop just won’t quite cut it. For those looking for a little more computing power, HP’s new Z8 workstation could be just the answer. The latest iteration of HP’s desktop workstations packs in a pair of Intel Skylake-SP processors, topping out with twinned Xeon Platinum 8180 chips: 28 cores/56 threads and 38.5MB cache each running at 2.5-3.8GHz, along with support for up to 1.5TB RAM.
Next year, you’ll be able to go higher still with the 8180M processors; same core count and speeds, but doubling the total memory capacity to 3TB, as long as you want to fill the machine’s 24 RAM slots.
Those processors and memory can be combined with up to three Nvidia Quadro P6000 GPUs or AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 parts if you prefer that team. The hefty desktop systems have four internal drive bays, two external (and a third external for an optical drive), and nine PCIe slots. Storage options include up to 4TB of PCIe-mounted SSD, and 48TB of spinning disks. A range of gigabit and 10 gigabit Ethernet adaptors are available; the machines also support 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2. Thunderbolt 3 is available with an add-in card.
This is one hell of a beast of a machine, and something most of us will never have the pleasure to use. That being said – I’ve always been fascinated by these professional workstations, and the HP ones in particular. Current models are obviously way out of my price range, but older models – such as a model from the Z800 range – are more attainable.
Shut up and take my money!
I have a Z600 under my desk at home. Looks like a Nokia compared to this bad boy
I hope HP fixed their heat issues, or it’ll be one noisy building furnace.
In all seriousness, I’d love to get a look at something like this just once. I’m fascinated also, though I have no practical need of anything like it.
You can buy the Z800 bare bones (i.e no GPU, optical drives, storage) and add them yourself down the line.
HP also has a good track record with what goes where and what is compatible or not.
Kind of disliked the laptop Z series from them (TN panel in a professional workstation laptop meant for design .. for real HP?!) but the modularity of the desktop line is one of the best.
Edited 2017-09-19 12:36 UTC
I sure hope they have a better BIOS implementation these days, HP’s BIOS was always shit in the old days.
It would be a shame for a machine like this to be crippled by poor firmware like in the past!
I’m a bit confused at who uses these things. I used to be a workstation user, back before things like AWS or Google cloud existed. Its much cheaper for my usages to just throw jobs at the cloud and pay for time used than to pay up front for a super beefy machine.
I’m sure there are niche uses, just curious what they are.
If you want 3D engineering simulation modelling that is responsive in realtime, I doubt you’d want to go to the cloud.
Not sure why it needs to be real time, but I’m not an engineer that requires real time modeling.
But basically for someone who wants low latency, near real time high performance. Ok, I can understand that to a certain extent.
Obviously, not the hard realtime of embedded systems, but “civilian realtime”. You change a model and you can see its effects straight away.
Seeing the effects of such changes from a VM that is running in the Cloud in “human realtime” would not be a challenge at all.
Getting all the data that you need for those models (and especially for 8K video production) online fast enough would be a much bigger challenge
So yes, in general you would be much better of (financiallY) to rent such computing power only when you need it. But if you need such computing power constantly, have data-upload limitations, or privacy concerns these workstations make sense
At the risk of repeating myself, privacy concerns do not evaporate simply because data isn’t stored in the cloud. If its important enough to worry about, worry about it regardless of where the physical server is located.
Privacy concerns in the cloud vs local are similar in some ways and different in others. But if there is a rule/law/policy that says “no data outside the building/company/country” the Cloud sometimes just stops being an option and local workstations start to make more sense. Of course you will still need to comply with many other rules/laws/policies to satisfy the privacy concerns
Unless its air gaped, it doesn’t make a difference. On premise vs in cloud is a distinction without a meaningful difference when it comes to security.
Would it have mattered if Equifax had its own on premise data center or if it was in the could? The unpacthed security vulnerability didn’t care, nor did the hackers.
You are starting to get off-topic here. We are discussing data on a workstation, not on a public facing webserver.
It also doesn’t matter if the cloud is really more secure or not, but if the policy/rule/law even allows it.
Does not compute. Must follow rule without question. Do not try to secure data. Policy will protect us.
Now you are just being silly and annoying. Not allowing data in the cloud can be part of a well thought out security policy while allowing data in (a foreign) cloud can be an actual criminal offense.
If its a policy, that can be changed and its know to be increasing costs, that should be challenged vigorously, If its a law, it should be lobbied against, if the costs are high enough. A rule/law/policy is not an absolute thing, what is more important is the real truth of matter. If it truly makes sense to keep data out of the cloud, great argue why that is. If you’re just appealing to authority, that’s just a failure of logic.
The idea that data is protected if its not in the US is kind of insane. That just means that it can’t be accessed by warrant, and has to be accessed by NSA.
Whee?
Of course the policy/rule/law that data should be kept inside the country doesn’t make that data safe (that requires a lot more security)
However, allowing some data outside of the country MIGHT immediately make that data unsafe.
This is one of the big problems in security. You need to get everything right because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Now I see that you love discussing security, but the topic here was a powerful workstation so maybe you should continue your discussion in a better suited thread or another forum. And please keep your arguments relevant to what people said, no strawmanning!
In practice, there is a significant difference between on premises security and cloud security; whilst you _can_ protect clouds with firewalls of the same mettle as on premises firewalls, it often isn’t done … particularly when cloud services are set up without IT security overview.
In the case of the Equinox exploit, the on-premises firewall I run should have blocked it.
In Canada it is relatively common policy for local storage requirements as using cloud services would put the data on servers under American jurisdiction which would contravene our privacy laws.
I work at a (Norwegian) cancer research lab with a a genomics and data analysis focus. The hospital patient privacy people would struggle to remain civil if we started analyzing sequencing data on foreign cloud services … not to mention that it’s just more pleasant to do interactive visualization on a local machine.
Understand the interactive real time visualization, not sure I completely agree that there are privacy implications with running things on AWS/Google infrastructure.
I mean, you shouldn’t have a lower standard of security measures, just because its not in the cloud. I’m sure its cheaper to bribe a janitor to physically access and obtain information for me, than it would be to bribe a Google/amazon employee. You know, if I wanted that data to build atomic supermen of un-common strength. Which I’m not even really sure I want. The upkeep on them alone would make the ROI tough to justify. Not to mention the bad press, if it leaked that I was the mastermind. Good PR people are tough to come by, and expensive.
Edited 2017-09-19 22:51 UTC
Look at it this way. Spec this thing to the brim and we’ll finally be able to run Chrome and Firefox at teh same time!!
Ahh, I just look forward to running Digger on it! Possibly, from Norton Commander 3.5 at 80×25 resolution
Edited 2017-09-19 14:50 UTC
And write some apps in QBasic. 🙂
I bet this thing facebooks so hard!
I wish I had a thousand upvotes to give you.
The article suggests that the maxed out machine would cost ~$50,000.
And then we think back to what workstations used to actually cost, Back In The Day, in 1980’s to ’90s dollars. And how they performed.
And look where we are.
Never ceases to amaze.
And, yea, 58 cores of Facebook and animated emojis — that’s pretty exciting stuff.
I remember an article being published in Personal Computer World (PCW) in 1993:
http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/pcw5-93i2.html
And being fascinated about what someone might use such a powerful and expensive computer for.