I was in Los Angeles for the 2010 HP Workstation Global Media Event.

During the event, HP announced several new products designed to keep them at the zenith of computing.

These products were:

• The immediate availability of the new six-core Intel Xeon 5600-series processors on the award-winning z800, z600, and z400 workstations. The new sexacore processors promise a jump in performance from the quad-core Xeon 5500 similar to the jump we got going from the dual core Intel Xeons. This truly is a big deal, and I hope to bring you some hands-on very soon.

According to Jim Zafarana, HP VP and General Manager for Workstations, “HP has invested in research and development through the economic downturn, innovating on top of our industry-leading workstations to provide an undeniably differentiated experience in our new product. HP customers are famous for pushing the limits of innovation, and as their industries undergo digital transformations, their next generation of breakthroughs is being powered by HP technology.” 

While it isn’t just a simple case of dropping in a new CPU and re-flashing the BIOS, much of the performance benefits from moving to the Xeon 5600s come from the new processors.

Anthony Neal-Graves is the General manager for Workstations at Intel, and he tells us why the Xeon 5600 is a capable CPU: “The new Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 series runs multithreaded workstation applications up to 45 percent faster than its predecessor, the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series. Workstations powered by the new Intel Xeon Processor5600 series give application developers the reliability, capacity and performance to help them bring innovative ideas to life faster than ever before.”

Now you see why I am jonesing for Mike Diehl to create a Westmere-powered HP z-series workstation, the John Obeto Special for me. I just need it!

• A mungo cool refresh of the EliteBook Mobile Workstation to include the 8740w, the only mobile workstation with a 30-bit DreamColor screen, capable of displaying 1 billion colors. You all know how I feel about the DreamColor. This is a product that truly has to be seen to be believed. Moreover, the innovations in this device include USB 3.0 and a new metal case. The 8740w comes with the afore-mentioned 17” DreamColor screen and can be equipped with up to a 1.73 GHz Intel Core i7-820QM CPU with 8MB L3 cache, up to 16 GB of 1333 GHz DDR3 SDRAM.
• A new small form factor version of the entry-level z200. Terry Pilsner of the HP Workstation Team was most effective in debuting this system when he pulled it out of the innards of a z800 case where it was hidden.

All of these innovative products, while impressive, would have not been as impressive if HP did not show how the gains from using these products positively impact real businesses.

On tap were some businesses that not only consume technology, but consume a lot of it: DreamWorks Animation Studios SKG, de Ferran Luzco Dragon Racing, PhaseSpace, Raleigh Studios, Yazdani Studios, etc.

Each of these companies has experienced huge gains in productivity by going with solutions based on HP products utilizing the new CPU.

These several companies are pleased with their decisions to go with HP hardware. My meetings with them will be the subject of a story in The Interlocutor and subsequent blog posts.