Anthony Frausto-Robledo, EIC (info@architosh.com)

11 Feb 2005

 

Apple's 'Xstation' - Market, Uses, Technology and Details

Dual-Core Chips, Developing Markets and Unix Realities Suggest Need for Xstation

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The Details

Apple has been rumored to have a true "workstation" machine in the making for quite some time. The company was criticized for calling its Power Mac G5 line of computers the first 64-bit personal computer because many analysts, competitors and users felt the Power Macs were more "workstation" than PC. It turns out the devil is in the details. The Power Mac G5 systems truly have workstation class hardware but they lack several key components to the definition: namely, ISV software and certification plus a truly workstation level graphics card. This is what is holding the company back in the workstation market.

There are reports circulating into Architosh that graphics card vendors have approached Apple but that the company doesn't get it. According to very good sources, Apple seems to think that its advanced game level cards are truly worthy of the CAD, CAM and EDA industries. But here's the real rub! Even contacts we have in animation studios that want to embrace Apple say they can't truly use their gear more unless they get stronger graphics cards. Even Pixar isn't fully Mac OS X. What a large marketing loss to Apple that is!

The Xstation

The original rumors on the Xstation suggested that it was a product relating to Apple's Xgrid technology and would contain a minimum of 4-32 64-bit PowerPC processors. Clearly any product over 4 processors would be more than a typical workstation. This product would be aimed at the high-performance computationally intensive markets like bioinformatics.

Yet, there is a bit of info coming together that the use of dual, dual-core IBM PowerPC 980 chips (would they be called G6?) might form a strategy for Apple to scale their Power Mac line from one to four engines. If they chose to use future dual-core PowerPC 980 processors in bigger configurations than dual chips arrangements they might consider a different form-factor strategy than the Power Mac line. Could this be the Xstation? It stands to reason that it could.

Closing Comments

A Gartner study a few years ago showed that the average "workstation" replacement cycle is 3.2 years. This is better than some people have been doing with their computers in businesses and workstations are much more profitable. While a small market, the workstation and HPC market has much promise, especially for Apple who can leverage the fact that the other Unices are tied to dying or struggling RISC hardware platforms. That means there is growth there for Apple and with the simple fix of a small-scaled certification program, a few key apps, and just one good workstation card, Apple could begin to pick off low-lying Unix fruit from SGI, Sun, HP and yes, even IBM.

For those companies and their customers who desire to stay in Unix land, they must come to realize that OS X is a very viable pathway into the future and can compliment well the direction IBM is taking with Linux on PowerPC. There is a natural compliment there: these two things -- Linux and PowerPC -- are growing. IBM's commitment to produce a Cell-based workstation only points up the fact that the seriousness of the Power platforms is very real.

When the largest computer company on the planet no longer has interests in PCs yet is investing heavily in Power and Linux....well -- let's just say that folks need to start letting this sink in.

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