Lenovo’s new Thinkstation PX workstation has up to 120 CPU cores but misses a crucial feature
It can take four Nvidia RTX 6000 but still doesn’t have Thunderbolt 4 ports
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Lenovohas released three newThinkStationworkstations, with the PX being the top-of-the-range model, one that can take two 4th generationIntel Xeon ScalableCPUs (formerly known asSapphire Rapids). With a pair of $17,000 Intel Xeon Platinum 8490H processors, users can access 120 cores (240 threads) and 225MB cache.
The other highlight of the new PX range is its ability to support fourNvidia RTX 6000Ada Lovelace GPU cards with 48GB memory each, which makes it a great choice for traditional creative and data use cases (animation,data visualization, simulation, rendering, and video editing) but also forVDI(Virtual DesktopInfrastructure) applications.
As expected, it can support up to 2TBDDR5RAM(registered ECC) and up to nine storage drives (a mix ofSSDandHDD). Not surprisingly, all this requires a hefty PSU (a 1.85kW model is bundled with optional redundancy) andWindows 11 Profor Workstation, a special edition ofWindows 11, is installed.
Aston Martin tie-up for the next Bond?
The dual-socket machine comes with a rack-optimized 6U chassis, meaning that 7 of these can be stacked high in a42U rack. Lenovo has partnered with Aston Martin - incidentally one of its customers - for the design of these workstations.
Elsewhere, the P5 and the P7 are single-socket models with less expansion capabilities. Like the PX, they also lackThunderbolt 4connectivity which can prove to be an issue for creative professionals that want to access DAS (direct attached storage) devices like anexternal SSD. Expect the three models to take over from the current P920, P720 and P520 series from May 2023 with a huge performance boost.
TheIntelXeon Platinum 8280 which powers the current P920 not only has less than half the number of cores than the 8490H, it is also almost four years old. But a fully laden ThinkStation PX won’t come cheap; aP920with 1TB memory, a pair of Platinum 8280, twoNvidia RTX A6000and five 2TB SSD will cost almost $90,000.
No EPYC or Threadripper Pro news yet
All eyes will now be on the follow up to the award winning ThinkStation P620, which is currently powered by the 64-coreThreadRipper Pro 5995WX, one that was launched back in July 2020 and has yet to get an update. Of particular note, is the fact that several smaller rivals to Lenovo have rolled out EPYC-based workstations including BroadBerry, ThinkMate, Supermicro, Velocity Micro and AVADirect.
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Current EPYC models still use PCIe 4.0 and DDR4.0 but when the4th generation AMD Epycprocessors (Genoa, 9004 series) become more widely available in the coming weeks, one could expect workstations with 192 cores and 384 threads (two EPYC 9654) to go on sale very soon.
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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
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