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62-401: Both of the founding companies had formed in 1985, intending to address different market niches; Stellar concentrated on high-performance workstation type machines, while Ardent developed a custom vector processor that allowed it to compete with large supercomputers for graphics-related tasks. Ardent had considered a workstation entry of their own to compete with Stellar, but the merger ended

124-503: A $ 12,000 (equivalent to $ 29,000 in 2023) "personal workstation" might be a high-end PC like Macintosh II or IBM PS/2 Model 80 , low-end workstation, or a hybrid device like the NeXT Computer , all with similar, overlapping specifications. One differentiator between PC and workstation was that the latter was much more likely to have a graphics accelerator with support for a graphics standard like PHIGS or X Window , while

186-425: A local area network and run multi-user operating systems . The term workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network , but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems , Silicon Graphics , Apollo Computer , DEC , HP , NeXT , and IBM which powered

248-554: A workstation system with enough performance to be a serious threat to the Ardent Titan, and at a lower price. Ardent responded by starting work on a new desktop system called Stiletto , which featured two MIPS R3000s (paired with two R3010 FPUs ) and four i860s for graphics processing (the i860s replaced the vector units). Their first product was demonstrated in March 1988. An investment from Japanese company Mitsui and others

310-507: A $ 50,000 price point. By late 1986, however, it became clear that this was unrealistic. A second round of funding came from Kubota Corporation , a Japanese heavy industries company, which had cash to spare and was looking for new opportunities during the strong Yen period. Kubota agreed not only to fund the completion of the Titan. but also to provide production facilities in Japan for sales into

372-400: A Kubota unit. On July 24, 1990, Stardent fired co-chairmen Michels and Sanders, after offering a settlement to avoid publicity. In August, the board of directors dismissed Michels and Sanders from the board, and agreed to sell more equity in the company to Kubota for an additional $ 60 million. In August 1991, Stardent spun off its popular Application Visualization System (AVS) software into

434-558: A desktop-sized 3D graphics accelerator for the Alpha -based DEC 3000 AXP workstations, called Denali . The company also bought DEC 3000 AXP workstations, packaged them with the Denali, and sold the integrated product as the Kenai workstation. The company changed its name again, becoming Kubota Graphics Company which closed down in 1994. In 1994, Kubota Graphics was bought by AccelGraphics ,

496-411: A megapixel display (roughly 1000×1000 pixels), and one " MegaFLOPS " compute performance (at least one million floating-point operations per second). RFC 782 defines the workstation environment more generally as "hardware and software dedicated to serve a single user", and that it provisions additional shared resources. This is at least one order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of

558-950: A much higher price. Workstations have typically driven advancements in CPU technology. All computers benefit from multi-processor and multicore designs (essentially, multiple processors on a die ). The multicore design was pioneered by IBM's POWER4 ; it and Intel Xeon have multiple CPUs, more on-die cache, and ECC memory. Some workstations are designed or certified for use with only one specific application such as AutoCAD , Avid Xpress Studio HD, or 3D Studio Max . The certification process increases workstation prices. Modern workstations are typically desktop computers with AMD or NVIDIA GPUs to do high-performance computing on software programs such as video editing , 3D modeling , computer-aided design , and rendering . By January 2009, all RISC -based workstation product lines had been discontinued: In early 2018, RISC workstations were reintroduced in

620-509: A personal workstation suitable for 2D CAD costing $ 5,000 (equivalent to $ 12,000 in 2023) to $ 25,000 (equivalent to $ 61,000 in 2023) was available from multiple vendors. Mid-range models capable of 3D graphics cost from $ 35,000 (equivalent to $ 86,000 in 2023) to $ 60,000 (equivalent to $ 147,000 in 2023), while high-end models overlapping with minicomputers cost from $ 80,000 (equivalent to $ 197,000 in 2023) to $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 246,000 in 2023) or more. By then

682-467: A separate company. In November of that same year, Stardent announced that it would cease to operate under the name Stardent Computer, sell off its Titan workstation operations to Kubota Pacific Computers, find a buyer for its Vistra workstations and create a new company called GS Computer Services to provide maintenance and support for its discontinued GS series workstations it inherited from Stellar. Investors lost an estimated $ 200 million. The remainder of

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744-661: A series of IBM POWER9 -based systems by Raptor Computing Systems. In October of 2024 System 76 introduces The Thelio Astra an Arm workstation aim for autonomous car industry. Most of the current workstation market uses x86-64 microprocessors. Operating systems include Windows , FreeBSD , Linux distributions , macOS , and Solaris . Some vendors also market commodity mono-socket systems as workstations. These are three types of workstations: A high-end desktop market segment includes workstations, with PC operating systems and components. Component product lines may be segmented, with premium components that are functionally similar to

806-475: A similar role for technical computing. Sun's thin clients include the Sun Ray product line. However, traditional workstations and PCs continued to drop in price and complexity as remote management tools for IT staff became available, undercutting this market. A high-end workstation of the early 1980s with the three Ms, or a "3M computer" (coined by Raj Reddy and his colleagues at CMU), has one megabyte of RAM,

868-402: A single person sitting at the console. It was introduced in 1959. One peculiar feature of the machine is that it lacks any arithmetic circuitry. To perform addition, it requires a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This reduced the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive. The machine is codenamed CADET and was initially rented for $ 1000 per month. In 1965,

930-518: A small variety of addressing schemes. The software ran on Unix System V Release 3 with proprietary support for up to four-way SMP and the vector processor . The compiler was based on the Convex Fortran (and C) compiler. Their significant graphics system for visualization was DORE (Dynamic Object Rendering Environment). Their goal was to release their Titan supercomputer in July 1987 at

992-666: A strong blow to OKI's business. In October 1994, OKI spun off its printer and facsimile business, and established Oki Data Corporation. In the later 90's, with the spread of the Internet, OKI worked on being recognized as a company that offers network solutions. In December 1990, the OKI 900 cell phone was marketed. The phone was famous in phone phreaking culture for its advanced debugging menu allowing eavesdropping of others cell phone calls and observation of cell phone network operation. In 2004, OKI released its IP CONVERGENCE Server SS9100,

1054-451: A subsidiary, which markets its products under the OKI brand, is focused on creating professional printed communications products, applications and services. OKI Data provides a wide range of devices, from printers, faxes and multi-functional products to business applications and consultancy services. Through its American business arm, OKI Data America markets the OKI proColor Series, a line of digital production printers designed specifically for

1116-675: A total of 20 MIPS and had a vector coprocessor capable of 80 MFLOPS. 16 to 128MB of system memory was supported. 64MB of memory was typical. The four threads were implemented using a Barrel processor design similar to that used in the CDC 6000 series and the Denelcor HEP . The GS2000 graphics subsystem supported interactive 3D rendering at rates of up to 120,000 Gouraud-shaded triangles per second and 600,000 short vectors per second. Texture mapping and antialiasing with an accumulation buffer were also supported. The CPU and graphics system shared

1178-423: A traditional operating system and perform computations locally, with storage on a remote server . These are intended to reduce the initial system purchase cost, and the total cost of ownership , by reducing the amount of administration required per user. This approach was first attempted as a replacement for PCs in office productivity applications, with the 3Station by 3Com . In the 1990s, X terminals filled

1240-684: A workstation in the modern sense), is the Alto developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. Other early workstations include the Terak 8510/a (1977), Three Rivers PERQ (1979), and the later Xerox Star (1981). In the early 1980s, with the advent of 32-bit microprocessors such as the Motorola 68000 , several new competitors appeared, including Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems , with workstations based on 68000 and Unix . Meanwhile, DARPA 's VLSI Project created several spinoff graphics products, such as

1302-628: The 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s. Workstations formerly offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers , especially in CPU , graphics , memory, and multitasking. Workstations are optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulations like computational fluid dynamics , animation , video editing , image editing , medical imaging , image rendering, computational science , generating mathematical plots , and software development . Typically,

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1364-455: The IBM 1130 scientific computer became the successor to 1620. Both of these systems run Fortran and other languages. They are built into roughly desk-sized cabinets, with console typewriters. They have optional add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punched-card I/O. Early workstations were generally dedicated minicomputers , a multiuser system reserved for one user. For example,

1426-485: The IF-800 series  [ jp ] , which was a successful business-use PC business. It also added a facsimile business unit in search of private sector demand. In 1982, OKI introduced the world's first cash-recycling ATM, allowing deposited banknotes to be immediately used for withdrawal. In the early 90s, Japanese economy was in the midst of recession that continued after the bubble economy collapsed, which also hit

1488-618: The PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation , is regarded as the first commercial minicomputer. Workstations have historically been more advanced than contemporary PCs, with more powerful CPU architectures, earlier networking, more advanced graphics, more memory, and multitasking with sophisticated operating systems like Unix. Because of their minicomputer heritage, from the start workstations have run professional and expensive software such as CAD and graphics design, as opposed to PCs' games and text editors. The Lisp machines developed at MIT in

1550-516: The Silicon Graphics 3130 . Target markets were differentiated, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations and SGI as graphics workstations. RISC CPUs increased in the mid-1980s, typical of workstation vendors. Competition between RISC vendors lowered CPU prices to as little as $ 10 per MIPS, much less expensive than the Intel 80386 ; after large price cuts in 1987 and 1988,

1612-556: The VAX computer, was VP of Engineering. Michels had considered working with Poduska, but founded Convergent Technologies instead, before Ardent. Each processor unit consisted initially of a MIPS R2000 CPU, and later a R3000 , connected to a custom vector processor . The vector unit held 8,192 64-bit registers that could be used in any way from 8,192 one-word to thirty-two 256-word registers. This compares to modern SIMD systems which allow for perhaps eight to sixteen 128-bit registers with

1674-453: The form factor is that of a desktop computer , which consists of a high-resolution display, a keyboard , and a mouse at a minimum, but also offers multiple displays, graphics tablets , and 3D mice for manipulating objects and navigating scenes. Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories, and collaboration tools like videoconferencing . The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs since

1736-465: The graphic arts and production market in North America to offer print solutions for color-critical applications. The company was founded by Kibataro Oki (1848–1906), an engineer formerly employed at a Kobusho (Ministry of Industry) factory. In 1877, only a year after Alexander Graham Bell 's invention, Kubusho had started an effort to make telephone receivers by reverse engineering and Oki

1798-668: The Far East. By the time it was finally ready for testing in February 1988, the performance leadership position of Titan had been eroded and the price had risen to $ 80,000. In December 1987, Dana changed its name to Ardent Computer after learning about a local disk drive company called Dana Computer. The merger of the two rivals, Stellar and Ardent, was announced on August 30, 1989, and completed in November 1989, with Poduska as chief executive. Bell served as chief scientist. Although

1860-752: The Middle East, Central and South American countries as well as other Asian countries. In 1972, OKI established Oki Data Corporation (ODC: today's OKI Data Americas), a Japan-US joint venture located in Philadelphia , to develop the DP100, dot printers. In 1975, OKI developed the world's first automobile telephone system together with Bell Labs . This was the beginning of OKI's wireless technology, and, as of 2009, OKI keeps expanding this technology into vehicle-to-vehicle communications and ETC ( Electronic toll collection ) technologies. In May 1980, OKI launched

1922-421: The OKI brand, including digital color and monochrome printers , serial impact dot matrix printers , multifunction products and facsimiles . The history of Oki Data Americas can be traced back to 1972 when the company was founded as a joint venture between two Philadelphia entrepreneurs and their Japanese customer, Oki Electric, to develop and produce information technology products. One of its popular products

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1984-476: The PBX ( Private Branch Exchange ), the largest system of which in Japan installed by OKI. In addition to business from Japan, overseas business also grew, providing railroad-type printers, portable telephones and electric wires outside Japan. From around 1920, OKI achieved notable advances in its technical development of the common-battery switchboard. Asano Soichiro's son was appointed to the next chairman in 1931. In

2046-637: The Quadra 700 was an intriguing option at a fraction of the cost" as resource-intensive software such as Infini-D brought "studio-quality 3D rendering and animations to the home desktop". The Quadra 700 can run A/UX 3.0, making it a Unix workstation. Another example is the Nvidia GeForce 256 consumer graphics card, which spawned the Quadro workstation card, which has the same GPU but different driver support and certifications for CAD applications and

2108-652: The Stardent products were known for their high performance, they also demanded high prices. A 1990 model was quoted at $ 123,400, for example, although this price was much less than that of the Cray Y-MP . Kubota is alleged to have forced the merger; in an odd twist, the original Stellar group was left with most of the corporate power. A number of the Ardent employees were less than happy with this move, and quit to form other companies. Others attempted to get Kubota to spin off

2170-552: The United States under their distribution partners brand, IntoPrint. Oki sponsored English Premier League football club Portsmouth F.C. from 2005 to 2009. From 2003 to 2008, Oki owned the naming rights to Jubilee Oval in Kogarah , Sydney , Australia, which was the home ground of National Rugby League team St George Illawarra Dragons . Oki was also the major sponsor of 1.FC Kaiserslautern from 1990 to 1996. During

2232-449: The companies that make the products tend to have comprehensive repair/replacement plans. As the distinction between workstation and PC fades, however, workstation manufacturers have increasingly employed "off-the-shelf" PC components and graphics solutions rather than proprietary hardware or software. Some "low-cost" workstations are still expensive by PC standards but offer binary compatibility with higher-end workstations and servers made by

2294-805: The company would focus on the AVS software system and the existing shareholders of Stardent would become shareholders of the software firm. By the end of the year, the company had given up on finding a buyer, believed to be Oki Electric , for the Vistra line of workstations but still hoped to sell the underlying graphics technology based on the Intel i860 . Stardent decided to liquidate rather than pursuing new funding from Kubota Corporation. Its sales were estimated at only $ 40 million in 1990, which limited its ability to compete with other workstation manufacturers such as IBM , HP , and Silicon Graphics . Kubota Pacific cast about looking for direction, before finally settling on

2356-579: The consumer models but with higher robustness or performance. A workstation-class PC may have some of the following features: Oki Electric Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. ( 沖電気工業株式会社 , Oki Denki Kōgyō Kabushiki-gaisha ) , commonly referred to as OKI , OKI Electric or the OKI Group, is a Japanese information and communications technology company, headquartered in Toranomon , Minato-ku , Tokyo and operating in over 120 countries around

2418-531: The early 1970s pioneered some workstation principles, as high-performance, networked, single-user systems intended for heavily interactive use. Lisp Machines were commercialized beginning 1980 by companies like Symbolics , Lisp Machines , Texas Instruments (the TI Explorer ), and Xerox (the Interlisp-D workstations). The first computer designed for a single user, with high-resolution graphics (and so

2480-449: The early 2000s, this difference largely disappeared, since workstations use highly commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as Dell , Hewlett-Packard , and Fujitsu , selling x86-64 systems running Windows or Linux . Workstations are older than the first personal computer (PC). The first computer that might qualify as a workstation is the IBM 1620 , a small scientific computer designed to be used interactively by

2542-668: The first domestically produced computer to use core memory . In 1964 OKI developed OKISAVER, a terminal for online deposits which was provided to financial institutions. In addition to minicomputers such as the OKITAC series developed in the mid-1960s, OKI began supplying various I/O devices, electroprinters, and dot printers, mainly to the financial industry in the 1970s. OKI's business at this time included cash dispensers (CDs), automatic depositors (ADs) and automated teller machines (ATMs). In this period, OKI expanded its overseas business providing telecommunications systems to countries in

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2604-421: The former usually depended on software rendering or proprietary accelerators. The computer animation industry's needs typically caused improvements in graphical technology, with CAD using the same improvements later. BYTE predicted in 1989 "Soon, the only way we'll be able to tell the difference between traditional workstations and PCs will be by the operating system they run", with the former running Unix and

2666-425: The industry's first Microsoft.Net-compliant server, and in 2006, released its Center Stage NX5000, a carrier-grade communication server compliant with next-generation networks. In 2008, as part of its business selection and concentration measures, OKI spun off its semiconductor business to Rohm Co., Ltd. Oki Data Americas, Inc. , a subsidiary of Oki Data Corporation of Japan, produces PC peripheral equipment under

2728-483: The late 1930s, OKI's plants were used towards meeting the military demand for goods, having major effects on OKI's business, such as building new production plants, and increasing its capital as well as the number of its affiliates. OKI increased its production capacity after WWII to restore magnetotype telephones and exchanges that were damaged during the war, OKI endured great difficulties as it moved toward rebuilding itself. On November 1, 1949, Oki Electric Industry Co.,

2790-468: The late 1990s have reduced distinction between the PCs and workstations. Typical 1980s workstations have expensive proprietary hardware and operating systems to categorically distinguish from standardized PCs. From the 1990s and 2000s, IBM 's RS/6000 and IntelliStation have RISC -based POWER CPUs running AIX , and its IBM PC Series and Aptiva corporate and consumer PCs have Intel x86 CPUs. However, by

2852-598: The latter running OS/2 , classic Mac OS , and/or Unix. Many workstations by then had some method to run increasingly popular and powerful PC software such as Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Word . The magazine demonstrated that year that an individual could build a workstation with commodity components with specifications comparable to commercially available low-end workstations. Workstations often featured SCSI or Fibre Channel disk storage systems, high-end 3D accelerators , single or multiple 64-bit processors , large amounts of RAM , and well-designed cooling. Additionally,

2914-588: The maker of AccelGraphics AG300 and AG500. AccelGraphics in turn was acquired by Evans & Sutherland in 1998. The Stellar line was called the graphics supercomputer (GS). It was considered an advanced design for the late 1980s. The Stellar GS workstation family consisted of the GS1000 and GS2000 models. After Stellar merged with Ardent to form Stardent they were sold as the ST1000 and ST2000 models. The GS2000 CPU supported four threads or streams of execution for

2976-508: The need for a second design. The company was never able to compete successfully with larger vendors and its sales peaked at around $ 40 million in 1990. The company successfully sold off some of its technologies before being broken up completely in 1994. Stellar Computer was founded in 1985 in Newton, Massachusetts , and headed by William Poduska , who had previously founded Prime Computer and Apollo Computer . This company aimed to produce

3038-558: The original development group as a new company called Comet , but nothing came of this. In early July 1990, the California portion of Stardent was transferred to the company headquarters in Massachusetts. Co-chairmen Michels and Sanders brought suit against Kubota on July 13 for $ 25 million in damages, contending that Kubota used its financial leverage over Ardent to force it to merge and then transfer people and technology into

3100-472: The proliferation of phones in Japan under the country's Telephone Expansion Plans. The company saw the need of automatic exchanges as well, as phones became common. Asano Soichiro of Asano zaibatsu , a predecessor of the Fuyo Group , was elected to chairman in 1912. During World War I , wartime demand brought large profits to OKI as demand for telephone service increased. A strong demand emerged for

3162-476: The same as the consumer market, and the price differential narrowed. For example, most Macintosh Quadra computers were originally intended for scientific or design work, all with the Motorola 68040 CPU, backward compatible with 68000 Macintoshes. The consumer Macintosh IIcx and Macintosh IIci models can be upgraded to the Quadra 700 . "In an era when many professionals preferred Silicon Graphics workstations,

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3224-422: The same vendor. This allows software development to take place on low-cost (relative to the server) desktop machines. Workstations diversified to the lowest possible price point as opposed to performance, called the thin client or network computer . Dependent upon a network and server, this reduces the machine to having no hard drive, and only the CPU, keyboard, mouse, and screen. Some diskless nodes still run

3286-529: The second half of 1960s into the 1970s. To respond to the high-level economic growth Japan was experiencing, OKI needed to speed up its business operations and clarify responsibilities. OKI began producing and supplying business machines such as teletypewriters , and perforation typewriters . In June 1961, OKI launched OKITYPER-2000, an electric teletypewriter that could simultaneously make perforation tapes and book entry forms. The company also developed and sold various general-purpose computers such as OKITAC-5090,

3348-411: The system memory and vector coprocessor. The GS workstations used the X window system and the 3D hardware was programmed through an X extension known as XFDI (X Floating-point Device Interface). There were bindings for C and Fortran. The display supported 1280 by 1024 resolution at 12 or 24 bits per pixel (in pseudo-color and true-color modes). 12 and 24-bit Z buffers were supported. The GS2000 cabinet

3410-486: The time. The original 1981 IBM Personal Computer has 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around 1  kFLOPS ( 30 kFLOPS with the optional 8087 math coprocessor. Other features beyond the typical personal computer include networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses. Another goal was to bring the price below one " megapenny ", that is, less than $ 10,000 (equivalent to $ 28,000 in 2023), which

3472-400: The world. OKI produced the first Japan-made telephone in 1881, and now specializes not only in developing and manufacturing telecommunications equipment but also in information products and mechatronics products, such as automated teller machine (ATMs) and printers . OKI had a semiconductor business, which it spun off and sold to Rohm Company, Limited on October 1, 2008. OKI Data ,

3534-448: Was achieved in the late 1980s. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many workstations cost from $ 15,000 to $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 200,000 in 2023) or more. The more widespread adoption of these technologies into mainstream PCs was a direct factor in the decline of the workstation as a separate market segment: Since the late 1990s, the workstation and consumer markets have further merged. Many low-end workstation components are now

3596-517: Was announced in June 1988, bringing the total capital raised to $ 48 million. At almost the same time, in November 1985, Allen H. Michels and Matthew Sanders III co-founded Dana Computer, Inc. in Sunnyvale, California . The company sought to produce a desktop multiprocessing supercomputer dedicated to graphics that could support up to four processor units. Gordon Bell , who had been architect of

3658-552: Was established to succeed the former entity Oki Electric Co., Ltd. Two years later in November 1951, OKI's shares were listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange . It was also at this time when OKI started mass-producing the “Type-4 telephone,” which was called a "symbol of Japan’s postwar reconstruction". In 1956, it was the first to produce a 100-line Ericsson-type crossbar-switching systems for commercial use. OKI gradually transformed itself into an electronics company from

3720-516: Was in the team that came up with the first prototype. In January 1881, convinced that the nation was about to enter the age of communications, Kibataro Oki founded Meikōsha , which was later renamed OKI. The company manufactured the first telephone in Japan in 1881, five years after Bell invented the phone, and exhibited a silver-award-winning lacquer-coated wire at the 1885 International Inventions Exhibition in London. OKI contributed immensely to

3782-414: Was quite large: approximately 30 inches wide by 48 inches tall by 36 inches deep. There was a companion expansion chassis of about the same size which could contain a 9-track tape drive , for example. Workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to

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3844-626: Was the Okimate 10 thermal transfer printer, one of the first affordable color printers for early home computers . Oki Data Americas, Inc. relocated from Mt. Laurel, NJ and is headquartered in Irving , Texas . Other Oki Data Americas offices are in Mississauga, Canada; Mexico City, Mexico; and São Paulo, Brazil. Oki Data Americas ceased sales of all Oki-branded hardware as of March 31, 2021. Oki data produced printer will continue to be sold in

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