Editor’s Pick: HP Revs Up Engineering Workstations

Dear DE Reader:

HP has been busy. They've souped up their engineering-class Z4 workstation, introduced a headset for virtual reality (VR), extended support services to VR devices and, for good measure, they've also announced a new line of full-color 3D printers for making engineering-grade, functional parts. Today's Editor's Pick of the Week write-up will focus on the first two.

The Z4 desktop workstation already had the reputation of being a serious machine for 3D CAD, simulation, rendering and other compute-intensive stuff like machine learning. It's certified for all sorts of engineering applications. With it, you could pivot from design to analysis to visualization without a ton of latency garbage.

HP has announced that it will offer its engineering-class HP Z4 desktop workstation with a choice of an Intel Xeon or Intel Core X-series processor as well as up to two extreme graphics accelerators. Image courtesy of HP Inc.

What HP has announced is that they're tricking out the Z4 workstation to handle more action. For one, you'll be able to leverage dual extreme GPUs (graphic processing units). But you'll also be able to choose the CPU that fits your needs: A workstation-class Intel Xeon W family processor or one of the new Intel Core X-series processors.

Intel calls the Core X-series its “most scalable, accessible and powerful desktop platform ever.” For simplicity's sake, think of Core-X CPUs as extreme performance versions of many of the newer Intel Core-i series processors. The one to remember, however, is the Intel Core i9 and the Intel Core i9 Extreme Edition processor, which, according to Intel, is the first consumer desktop CPU with 18 cores and 36 threads of processing power.

Bundle all that CPU and graphics processing capacity together and you're ready for VR. And that brings us to the new HP Windows Mixed Reality Headset—Professional Edition. This baby offers 1440×1440 resolution per eye and a snappy refresh rate up to 90Hz. Its specs include six degrees of freedom, a 100-degree field of view when used with an HP Z Workstation and no tracking boundaries.

All of this together means that you should be able to create complex simulations then interact with them in a deep immersive experience. And that's on top of what should be greater designing, analyzing and rendering efficiency. Which, you can tell the boss, should make work a lot more fun, er, a lot more productive.

Details on all this are rolling out on HP landing pages. But you can get a head start on learning what's happening with the more powerful Z4 workstation and VR headset from today's Editor's Pick of the Week write-up and the supplied links.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE