DEVELOP3D CAD/CAM/CAE workstation special report – November 2013

NOVEMBER 2013 | DEVELOP3D.COM

CAD/CAM/CAE WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT rAck workstAtions And virtUAlisAtion eXPlAined

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

RACK Workstations DELL PRECISION R7610

From protecting IP and centralising IT management to delivering ultimate flexibility for CAD users, Dell’s new rack workstation has it all. Greg Corke reports

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it’s even possible to pause a session, change More recently, the rise of Virtual Desktop ack workstations, remote devices and reconnect to the same desktop. workstations, call them what Infrastructure (VDI) has added whole new The user doesn’t even have to be in the same levels of flexibility to how rack workstations you will, are nothing new. building as the rack workstation. Providing are deployed. By virtualising the CPU and Just like the iPhone and there’s a high-bandwidth, low latency (soon) GPU, multiple virtual machines the Kindle they have been connection in place, design teams can connect around since the late 2000s. can be spawned from a single physical rack workstation and given their own desktop OS remotely, across cities and countries. This not The idea is simple: your Windows desktop only means global design teams can share and applications. And they don’t all have to runs on a rack-mounted workstation, which hardware and follow the sun, operating 24 be the same. is housed in a data centre. Only the display hours a day, but it removes the need (pixel) data is transmitted over LAN to sync huge CAD datasets between or WAN to a thin client that sits on which can take time and cause an engineer’s desk. All of the CAD The R7610 is hugely flexible: equally at sites, sync errors. Everyone can work from data remains in the data centre. home delivering a high-end workstation one version of the truth with data In many ways it’s like streaming for design viz as it is serving up 12 held in a single PDM system. video, except the rack workstation generates each frame in real time virtual machines for entry-level 3D CAD Dell has been in the rack workstation business since 2008. as the designer pans, zooms and Its first offering, the Dell Precision rotates around the 3D CAD model.

R5400, delivered its remote The first machines were all about capabilities through a purpose built Teradici Virtual machines can be adapted for delivering remote workstations over a one to one connection. Move the workstation to the different workflows and engineers can access PCIe host card, which compressed and encrypted display data before sending it out high-performance, OpenGL-accelerated data centre and benefit in a number of ways: over the network. Meanwhile, a zero client that 3D CAD/CAM/CAE and PDM applications keep intellectual property secure, centralise sat on the engineer’s desk decompressed the on demand, on any device including thin IT management, log on anywhere (in the data and delivered the pixels to the screen. clients, tablets, and smartphones. Moving office, at home, or at a client meeting) and Dell’s rack workstations have been through from the design office to the boardroom, keep the design office quiet and clutter free.

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Teradici PC-over-IP Teradici’s PCoIP (PC-overIP) technology offers the easiest route to getting remote access to your Dell Precision R7610. And because it uses hardware, rather than software, to compress, encrypt and encode the display data, it promises to deliver a better user experience, particularly on higher latency, lower bandwidth networks.

All you need is a Tera2 host PCoIP card that sits inside your rack workstation, a standard 100Mbps network and a PCoIP client.

Inside the rack workstation the Tera2 card sits close to the GPU but the two cards actually connect externally. Instead of hooking your GPU up to a monitor you connect it to the Tera2 card using a standard DisplayPort cable.

The Tera2 card can

remotely support a single monitor up to 2,560 x 1,600 resolution or two displays at 1,920 x 1,200. Dell is currently evaluating a Tera4 card that can support up to four displays at 1,920 x 1,200 or two at 2,560 x 1,600.

Teradici’s Dynamic Network Adaptation technology continually monitors network latency and bandwidth and adjusts the image quality at times of congestion so user experience isn’t unduly affected. In the context of 3D CAD the model might remain fully interactive but may appear pixelated while moving. The user also has full control over these settings so can prioritise performance or image quality.

In terms of PCoIP clients Teradici recommends a zero client, such as the Dell

Wyse P25, which has no operating system nor GPU. USB ports allow users to connect keyboard and mice, even specialist devices like 3Dconnexion’s SpaceMouse Wireless (see page WS24).

However the USB ports can be locked down so it’s not possible to copy or write data to external drives. This can help protect against IP theft or infection by malware.

Teradici also recently released a free software client, acknowledging the need to give its users flexibility at the end point.

The software client is primarily seen as a complementary solution, for occasional use — to connect workers over VPN at home, for example — but Teradici does have some customers using it over LAN instead of zero clients.

With the software client Teradici acknowledges that the user experience is unlikely to be as good as when hardware is used at both ends. A zero client, for example, can decode a maximum of 200 megapixels per second whereas the software

client can do up to 50 megapixels per second. The performance also depends on the speed of the CPU in the client machine.

The software client is currently limited to 1,920 x 1,200 resolution on a single display and is available for Mac and PC. It only supports a direct connection and users will need the IP address of the rack workstation they want to connect to.

Support for software brokers, such as VMware View, will come early 2014.

■ teradici.com

(Left) Tera2 dual display PCoIP PCIe remote access host card inside a Dell Precision R7610 (Above) Clutter-free workspace: a Dell Wyse P25 zero client pictured alongside two 24-inch Dell UltraSharp displays

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

One-to-one connection

GPU pass-through

GPU virtualisation

The classic way of accessing a rack workstation gives each designer a dedicated rack workstation. With Dell’s Precision R7610 this could be an exceptionally powerful workstation: up to two Xeon processors, 512GB RAM and three high-performance GPUs.

GPU pass-through allows a physical GPU to be mapped directly to a virtual machine. The workstation’s CPU resources are shared but each user has access to his or her own dedicated graphics card. The Dell Precision R7610 can support up to three users with double width GPUs or four users with single width GPUs.

GPU virtualisation allows multiple 3D CAD users to virtualise GPU and CPU resources. It offers ultimate flexibility as virtual machines designed to handle different workflows can be spawned by users on demand.

The connection is usually made using PCoIP (PC-over-IP), a technology developed by Teradici. Best results come when using dedicated PCoIP hardware at both ends to compress and decompress the pixel data.

a number of revisions since and the company recently released the Precision R7610, a dedicated rack version of the T7610. The principles remain the same, albeit with much improved Teradici hardware, but Dell has also added virtualisation into its rack workstation offering, providing support for Citrix.

The hardware The template for the Dell Precision R7610 is the Dell Precision T7610 and features virtually identical components to its desktop counterpart. According to Dell, this means that certification from leading CAD/CAM/CAE software developers is straightforward as all the hard work has already been done for the desktop machine.

The similarities end there though. The Precision R7610 has been designed from the ground up to sit in a server rack and firms will most likely host tens or hundreds of them in an air-conditioned data centre.

The Precision R7610 features a streamlined 2U design, and while it might not be the slimmest rack workstation on the market, it does pack in an incredible amount of processing power.

Dell makes a lot of noise about its ‘industry leading’ processing capabilities, both for CPU and GPU. While a lot of rack workstations max out at 135W per CPU, Dell can go all the way up to 150W, meaning it can Above (A look Inside the Dell Precision R7610 rack workstation) Below (with and without the front panel)

GPU pass-through needs a dedicated virtualisation software stack such as Citrix XenServer and Citrix XenDesktop with HDX 3D Pro.

take exactly the same processors as its highend desktop workstations.

This increased headroom means the Precision R7610 can be kitted out with two top-end Intel Xeon E5-2687W v2 CPUs, each of which boast eight cores running at a very quick 3.4GHz. Depending on workloads, there are plenty of other options for CPUs, including an

extensive range of 4, 6, 8 or 10 core chips from the new Intel Xeon E52600 v2 family. A 12 core Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 will be available soon.

Dell is similarly bullish about its GPU capacity and offers capacity for up to three double width 225W cards. This includes the Quadro K6000 (available soon) and the Tesla K20 for GPU compute. With support for GPU virtualisation coming later this year we would also expect Nvidia’s GRID K2 to join this list.

Those with lower-end GPU requirements

The software to enable GPU virtualisation is not quite there yet, but it will soon open up the Precision R7610 to many more 3D CAD users — theoretically as many as 12 or 24 per machine. In the Precision R7610 hardware GPU sharing (vGPU) requires an Nvidia GRID GPU.

can squeeze in four single width graphics cards instead, including the AMD FirePro V4900, W5000 & W7000 or the Quadro K2000 & K4000.

There are some limitations to this wave of GPU and CPU power. Once you go above 450W for graphics, you are limited to 135W CPUs. A special 1,400W power supply will also be required instead of the standard 1,100W unit.

With 16 DIMM slots the Precision R7610 currently peaks at 256GB of 1,600MHz ECC RDIMM memory, though capacity will rise to 512GB once 32GB DIMMS become available. This might sound like a lot but when you consider that a single workstation could possibly be shared between 12 or even 24 concurrent users resources soon get used up.

As with Dell’s desktop workstations, the R7610 features Reliable Memory Technology (RMT), a Dell patented technology that is claimed to “eliminate virtually all memory errors.”

It works in a similar way to a hard disk drive that has suffered physical damage to the platter. When the machine detects a nonrepairable memory error, it reboots and, at a BIOS level, prevents the system from writing to that spot again.

Such errors typically lead to the DIMM being replaced but, with RMT, Dell reckons it can correct up to seven errors over

The REMOTE EXPERIENCE A common fear with rack workstations is that the experience won’t be as good as when the workstation is under your desk — that there will be a lag between when you move the mouse and when the 3D model reacts on screen.

This is certainly true with mainstream remote technologies, such as GoToMyPC, where graphics is handled in software, rather than the GPU. But with workstationclass remote technologies it can be extremely hard to tell any difference.

Of course, everything depends on the quality of the connection.

While bandwidth is important, latency (reaction time, measured in milliseconds) has the biggest impact.

On a local Gigbabit network where latency is very low (typically between 0-1ms) the user experience should be very good. However, when rack workstations are accessed from a remote location over WAN it may well take a knock, particularly over large distances.

This might not necessarily be in terms of how reactive a 3D model is when a user moves the mouse.

Both Teradici and Citrix technologies are able to temporarily drop model quality to maintain interactivity.

To the end user the 3D model might appear pixelated as it is rotated on screen but it will quickly refine as soon as the model stops moving — much like a progressive render.

Dell says the best user experience comes when using Teradicibased hardware, both in the rack workstation and on the desk. This is because all of the compression and decompression is handled in hardware meaning it can deal with latency issues much better.

With Citrix, as the graphics compression is done in software, user experience will likely take a bigger hit as latency increases.

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

the lifetime of the DIMM, minimising downtime, while keeping the machine stable.

Unlike the desktop T7610 which can take up to eight 2.5-inch drives, storage in the R7610 is limited to six (SSD, HDD or SAS).

We use limited in the looser sense of the word, as the reality is most users will rely on some sort of shared storage for data.

This could be a NAS (Network Attached Storage) or a SAN (Storage Area Network) for higher end users.

There are three main ways to utilise the resources in the Precision T7610, from virtualisation to direct connections. This means Dell is able to offer incredible flexibility in how its rack workstation is deployed, theoretically serving from one up to twelve (even 24) 3D CAD users from a single machine. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

One-tO-One cOnnectiOn A one-to-one connection is the classic way of using a rack workstation and can be a simple way of getting remote access.

Each designer is given a dedicated remote workstation running a client operating system like Windows 7. It’s exactly like having your own desktop workstation except the machine is usually kept in a data centre while the engineer controls it with a small zero client that sits on his or her desk.

3D applications can be served up with a number of protocols including Microsoft

RemoteFX and Citrix HDX 3D Pro but with Dell’s Precision R7610 the connection is commonly made using PCoIP (PC-over-IP), developed by Canadian firm Teradici.

With PCoIP the Dell Precision R7610 is kitted out with a dedicated Teradici Tera2 PCoIP host card, which takes the graphics output from the workstation’s GPU and converts it into encrypted IP packets, which are transmitted over the network. Client-side the data is decrypted and converted back into pixel information to be displayed locally.

The workstation can be controlled remotely with any PCoIP client, including VMware View and the new Teradici PCoIP Software Client but, according to Dell, the best experience comes from using a hardware client, such as the Dell Wyse P25 zero client. With dedicated processors at both ends, specifically designed to handle the compression and decompression, Dell says the experience is just like having a dedicated workstation under your desk.

PCoIP clients can communicate directly with the host card (all you need is the rack workstation’s IP address) so this can be a very low cost, simple way of delivering 3D CAD applications remotely — even from other sites.

However, the more remote workstations you add into the mix the more complex the management becomes and this is when third party broking software, such as VMware

View, comes into play, dynamically managing a pool of remote workstations so they can be accessed from a range of PCoIP clients.

With the Dell Precision R7610 a big benefit of a one-to-one connection is that the users can have dedicated use of an exceptionally powerful workstation: up to two Xeon processors, 512GB RAM and three highperformance GPUs (including two dedicated GPUs for GPU compute).

This is great for users of design visualisation or simulation software where multi-core processors offer big benefits.

However, for mainstream CAD, where GHz is more important than the number of cores, a one to one connection might not make the best use of the resources that can be packed into this dual CPU rack workstation. Here, virtualisation can dramatically increase user density, without adversely impacting performance.

GPU Pass-thrOUGh GPU pass-through allows a physical GPU to be mapped directly to a virtual machine.

The workstation’s CPU resources are shared but each user has access to a dedicated graphics card.

The Dell Precision R7610 can support up to four physical GPUs so a typical virtual CAD machine might comprise of four virtual CPU cores, 16GB or 32GB RAM and a dedicated Nvidia Quadro K2000 or AMD

MoRe oPTIoNS RACK WoRKSTATIoNS AND BLADe SeRVeRS With the rise of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) the lines between rack workstations and graphics server blades are blurring.

Broadly speaking rack workstations offer more flexibility as they can run a client or server operating system and feature standard desktop workstation graphics cards. A graphics server blade, on the other hand, can only run a server operating system and uses passively cooled GPUs. Here’s a quick run down of some of the current options.

The Fujitsu Celsius C620 is an entry-level 1U rack workstation. With support for a single Xeon processor (up to 4 cores), a single GPU (from Quadro K600

up to GRID K2) and up to 32GB RAM it’s best suited to a one to one connection using a dedicated Teradici-based CELSIUS RemoteAccess card.

Workstation Specialists WS-r cranks the single CPU rack workstation up a level, offering up to 12 cores, 512GB RAM and two double width GPUs on a one to one connection using Teradici PC-o-IP hardware.

Despite the name the HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade is arguably a rack workstation as it runs both client and server operating systems.

It features two Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 CPUs (up to 12 cores) and up to 512GB RAM. A graphics expansion

blade, which sits alongside the main blade, supports a vast range of graphics boards: two single width or one double width.

For GPU virtualisation this means the HP blade is limited to one Nvidia GRID K2 card, but it does offer an interesting proposition for GPU pass through by hosting eight Quadro 1000M GPUs or six Quadro 3000M GPUs on a pair of mezzanine PCI Express boards.

The Supermicro Server RZ-1240i-NVK2, available

from Boston and direct from Supermicro, is a 1U rack server, very much focused on VDI. It features up to two Xeon E5-2600 v2 CPUs, two Nvidia GRID K2 GPUs and 256GB memory.

The Tyan FT77A-B7059 is a 4U monster, very much focused on GPU intensive workflows. It’s certified for four Nvidia GRID K2 cards (for graphics) or eight Tesla (K10, K20, K20X) for compute, has two Xeon processors and up to 768GB RAM.

Nvidia, best known for its GPUs, is also developing entire systems. The 4U Nvidia GRID VCA Visual Computing Appliance) combines hardware and software for an out-of the box VDI solution.

Nvidia goes all out on graphics with a ‘Max’ version featuring up to eight GRID K2s, two Xeon processor and 384GB RAM. The system includes all the virtualisation software (including the client and the hypervisor that creates the virtual machines).

(Left) The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade nestled alongside a graphics expansion blade (Above) The GPU-dense Nvidia GRID VCA

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

FirePro W5000 GPU. GPU pass-through for 3D CAD needs a dedicated virtualisation software stack commonly handled by Citrix XenServer (a hypervisor that creates and runs the virtual machines) and Citrix XenDesktop with HDX 3D Pro (a desktop and app virtualisation solution that is specifically designed to support professional 3D applications (through Microsoft DirectX and OpenGL)).

Client side, users need the Citrix Receiver client, an app that runs on pretty much any device, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, so it’s even possible to drive a high-performance workstation from a tablet.

GPU pass-through can be a powerful way of delivering virtual workstations as it gives each user a dedicated physical graphics resource. This sometimes means a high cost of ownership per connection, but if each GPU is a mid-range graphics card, which is sufficient for mainstream CAD, then the hardware costs don’t actually stack up that much.

When kitted out with two eight-core Xeon processors a Precision R7610 can deliver four respectable virtual CAD machines. Each one might consist of four CPU cores, an Nvidia Quadro K2000 or AMD FirePro W5000 and 16GB RAM. With most CAD operations typically using one or two CPU cores and another reserved for the OS this specification would also give some spare CPU capacity for multi tasking or multithreaded operations like rendering or simulation. Alternatively, save money with Quad Core Xeons and create four dual core virtual machines.

GPU pass-through doesn’t offer as much user density as a fully virtualised CAD workstation (CPU and GPU), but it is possible to have more than four virtual machines per workstation. The caveat is only four of these will be GPU accelerated: the rest will use software graphics so will only be suitable for office workers running apps like Outlook and Word.

Virtual GPU (vGPU)

Build yourself a remote workstation

desktop workstations.

AMD’s FirePro R5000 does a similar job, combining Teradici hardware and a midrange professional 3D graphics card on a single PCI Express board. The advantage is you only use one motherboard slot instead of two and everything is controlled with a single driver.

However, getting remote capabilities for your workstation doesn’t

So you want to use your high-performance workstation from home, the board-room or the shop floor, but don’t want to invest in a rack? Don’t worry; it’s actually very easy to turn any desktop machine into a remote workstation.

One way to do this is using hardware-based PCoIP. Simply buy a Teradici host card, optional zero client and away you go (see page WS3). Many of the major workstation manufacturers also offer Teradici host cards as a option in their

GPU virtualisation is the next step up from CPU virtualisation and allows multiple 3D CAD users to share the resources of powerful individual GPUs. Nvidia is pushing this heavily with its GRID technology, which Dell says will be available in the Precision R7610 later this year.

The virtualisation software to enable this is not quite there yet, but it will be soon.

Citrix is currently previewing a new version of Xen Desktop (7.0) which will open up the Precision R7610 to many more 3D CAD users. With current generation Nvidia GRID technology theoretically this could be as many as 24 but will more likely be 12 for a better 3D CAD user experience.

In the Precision R7610 hardware GPU sharing (vGPU) is likely to be enabled with Nvidia GRID K2. However, this would have to be a special version of the card as the current model is designed to be passively cooled in servers and does not have an on-board fan.

The current Nvidia GRID K2 GPU is a dual height card with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and two GPUs, each the equivalent of a Quadro K5000.

As the Precision R7610 could in theory host three GRID K2s and two 12 core Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 CPUs, it would be possible to give 12 concurrent users access to a virtual machine with the equivalent of a Quadro K2000 GPU, 2 CPU cores and 16GB RAM. But the beauty of GPU virtualisation is that specifications don’t have to be rigid. It also offers incredible flexibility to designers and engineers, allowing GPU cores and memory to be physically allocated to each virtual machine.

An engineer that typically models parts and small assemblies could be assigned fewer GPU resources than one who works with large assemblies. Different virtual machines could be set up specifically to handle different workflows and spawned by users on demand, even part time users who may only

have to cost a bean. HP Z series workstations come free with HP RGS (Remote Graphics Software) a remote desktop protocol specifically designed for 3D graphics.

To get up and running you simply need to install HP RGS sender and receiver software on workstation and client. However, as compression and decompression is done in software it may not be so forgiving on high-latency networks.

need occasional access to a 3D viewer in a Product Data Management (PDM) system.

Virtualisation is not just about hardware though. A design house that does a lot of sub contracting work for an automotive or aerospace firm may have engineers that work on a project to project basis. One week that could be Catia, the next NX and the next AutoCAD. Virtual machines can be instantly re-allocated to users according to software and hardware requirements.

Conclusion Investing in rack workstations is not just a case of buying some machines, plugging them in and away you go. It’s a complex IT solution that needs careful consideration, not least about how to integrate the technology into your exciting infrastructure. Firms need to think beyond CPUs, GPUs and memory: rack workstations can demand a lot at the back end including the provision of data centres, SANs and well managed gigabit networks.

The good news is many organisations have the foundations in place having already invested in a virtualisation backbone for office PCs. Adding rack workstations into the mix, even with the 3D graphics performance that CAD demands, can actually be a relatively straightforward process.

In addition to the IT infrastructure there’s a big choice in how to best deploy the machines. The Dell Precision R7610 is a hugely flexible piece of kit: equally at home delivering a high-end workstation for design visualisation as it is serving up 12 virtual machines for entry-level 3D CAD. Then, at 6pm when everyone has gone home, it can even be turned into a render node.

While all of this will likely demand careful planning and monitoring to make the best use of resources, with the flexibility it gives you as a firm, being able to support all different types of 3D users, it’s a nice problem to have.

■ dell.co.uk/precision

AMD FirePro R5000: all-in one Teradici PCoIP hardware and mid-range GPU

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Fujitsu recommends Windows 8 Pro.

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AutoCAD Benchmark Results1 Quadro K2000 Quadro K600 – Recommanded Card Experience Real-Time interactivity

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© 2013 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Quadro, Tesla, CUDA, and Maximus are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. All company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are all subject to change without notice. FEB13

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GPU Virtualisation Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is starting to make waves in design and engineering. Now, with GPU virtualisation coming online, we asked AMD and Nvidia how will this impact users of 3D CAD software in firms small and large?

Will Wade Director Grid, NVIDIA

Bruno Stefanizzi, Sr. Manager Software Development, AMD

Traditionally, virtualised desktops and applications have been severely limited in both graphics compatibility and performance. This has made virtual desktops largely unusable for design and engineering purposes.

With recent advancements in GPU virtualisation and remoting, these challenges are being overcome allowing design and engineering professionals to utilise the power of the GPU wherever and whenever required.

Virtual desktop infrastructures such as Nvidia GRID enables the delivery of highperformance graphics to virtual desktop users creating graphicsintensive content. This provides the same no-compromise, interactive experience they typically have at their desk when using a physical workstation.

With major virtualisation companies including VMware, Microsoft and Citrix utilising Nvidia GRID technology they are able to provide graphics acceleration to guarantee full scale design application compatibility performance. In addition, IT managers are also able to provide virtual desktops from a range of virtual GPU profiles, which can deliver everything from an entry level virtualisation to a workstationclass graphics experience.

With GPU powered virtual desktops and applications, enterprises will benefit from higher productivity by providing their employees with secure mobile access from any device.

Additionally, if users lose or damage their laptop or tablet they can be assured that no intellectual property is lost along with the device. Virtualised desktop

VDI is a hot topic. The ability to work on any device, but still have the performance of a traditional local 3D CAD workstation, is desirable to all designers.

IT managers also have their eye on VDI as they offer manageable solutions with the ability to scale as required.

VDI also offers the benefit of centralising IT resources and solves some of the cross platform issues caused by different operating systems and form factors (tablets) that just weren’t there five years ago.

Even CAD software vendors are happy to promote VDI but usually using their servers as it gives them a degree of visibility and control. Software can’t be pirated if the code isn’t available.

Of course to make this work you need good infrastructure with the local or wide area network (WAN). Application performance is also dependent on effective encoding and decoding of the stream (the screen’s content).

There are two parts to this: first accelerating the CAD tool’s 3D graphics engine and then sending pixel data over the wires.

For compressing and sending data AMD has RapidFire technology that brings the 3D content from the server with maximum image quality and low latency (time to transmit).

Some CAD software vendors have used earlier APIs but as RapidFire is an open platform working on multiple hardware (not just AMD) adoption is likely to be high like OpenGL and OpenCL. RapidFire also has high adoption with game developers as the next batch of consoles have AMD APUs (Xbox One and PS4) so decoding streams

solutions also enable contractors to have short-term access to sensitive material without having to transfer any of the project files to their personal machines, thus streamlining the process of working with freelancers.

VGPUs also offer design companies with a limited IT infrastructure the ability to implement virtual workstations for professional, graphicsintensive applications on an ad-hoc basis. Nvidia GRID VCA offers a complete virtual workstation solution allowing designers to create complex models without the need to purchase dedicated, local workstations. Even select parts of projects can be outsourced, giving freelancers access to in-house data and graphics performance while keeping data safe.

Advancements in VDI mean firms, large or small, are no longer shackled by purchasing expensive hardware or only employing freelancers who have the right kit. Utilising the power of the cloud to solve hardware challenges allows businesses to easily expand or enhance their existing virtual desktop infrastructures and further expand the potential of their end users.

on this hardware is going to be commonplace.

For professional 3D applications AMD offers solutions where GPUs do the 3D grunt work and compress the streams. Support for virtualised GPUs is also available so more than one user can access a highperformance GPU. This offers maximum flexibility in resources making it easy to support all different levels of CAD users as well as staff who may only need occasional access to 3D models in PLM software.

GPUs can also be used for compute including FEA and CFD. The parallel architecture of the GPU offers good performance returns.

To make this all work performance is key with servers offering high densities of GPUs from the AMD FirePro S10000 dual GPU card or several single width AMD FirePro S7000 cards (pack more in a server). AMD will also provide disruptive technology with High Density servers based on APU (CPU and GPU together in one die) for extremely high GPU density and power efficiency and low cost. The point is you need an open solution that works on the greatest array of hardware giving the best performance.

WS10 NOVEMBER 2013 DEVELOP3D.COM/HARDWARE

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT.indd 10

7/11/13 09:40:14

N O I T S K R O W R U O Y TAKE E M E R T X E E H TO T The new SanDisk Extreme® II SSD. With sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s1 it’s our fastest SSD to date.

Change your definition of fast, and fit the new SanDisk Extreme II Solid State Drive into your laptop or desktop. With a simple upgrade you get the speed and responsiveness you need to blaze through your day while extending the life for your PC. 480GB, 240GB and 120GB2 For more info or to buy now, visit www.AboutSanDiskSSD.com

1 Up to 550MB/s sequential read speed, 120 & 240GB models only; up to 545MB/s sequential read speed, 480GB model only. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon drive capacity, host device, OS and application. 1 megabyte (MB)=1 million bytes. 2 1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user storage less. Elements of PC tower image include ‘New Computer’ by Velo http://www.flickr.com Attribution-Commercial-ShareAlike License. SanDisk and SanDisk Extreme are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective holder(s). © 2013 SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved.

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

SSDs: UPGRADING Your workstatioN

Greg Corke finally treats his dusty old desktop to a Solid State Drive makeover

T

hree years may be the magic number as far as workstation upgrades go but, in these challenging times, some companies are stretching things out. Indeed, my trusty desktop just turned four a few months back.

Like most ageing machines mine has had a pretty hard life. I try to keep it lean, avoiding unnecessary bloatware, and tuning it regularly, but unfortunately my job dictates that software tools come and go with unnerving frequency, leaving a trail of DLLs in their wake. Much of the time it runs like a dog.

The most frustrating thing is when booting up. It takes 75 seconds to reach the Windows log in screen and then, significantly, another 160 to load the startup programs. And nothing that pops up in that Windows taskbar

Choosing an SSD Performance and Endurance There are two main things to consider when choosing a drive: performance and endurance.

Performance is important, and you should take into account both sustained and random read / write speeds and results from CAD tests, but don’t get too distracted by small percentage leads. In the real world you probably won’t notice any difference between most so-called ‘performance’ SSDs. Unfortunately the bottleneck in many drives is becoming the PCI Express 3.0 interface, which tops out at 6 Gbit/s (600MB/s) and, if your ageing workstation only has PCI Express 2.0 (3 Gbit/s (300MB/s), benchmarks are even less important. Do pay attention to lower capacity drives, usually the 120GB models, which typically offer significantly lower write speeds.

Endurance is exceedingly important for CAD as you need to feel confident that you will get full performance over the lifetime of your drive - and that your data is safe.

Unfortunately, endurance is very hard to quantify, made harder by the fact that there is no industry standard way to measure it. Take a closer look at the figures quoted by vendors, which often rate drives in terms of Terabyte Written (TBW) or Program and Erase cycles. There is a correlation between the two using something called the Write Amplication Factor (WAF). Do some research and try not to fall asleep.

Do take comfort in the five-year warranty offered on most prosumer / professional SSDs, as these are not typically available on mainstream consumer drives.

is a luxury. They are all critical tools (antivirus, backup, dropbox, Spotify, iTunes – OK, so maybe not all of them) During this time I may as well forget about doing anything productive with my machine. Launching Firefox or Outlook simply compounds the problem as the head on my trusty Hard Disk Drive (HDD) jumps from sector to sector doing everything (and nothing) at once.

It’s hugely frustrating when you’re in a hurry, so a lot of the time I end up leaving my machine in sleep mode. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea, not least wasting power needlessly.

Even when the machine has settled into its stride, day to day processes can become a bind. I’ve become close personal friends with the ‘Windows is busy’ icon. Hours of

my life are wasted waiting on apps to start, documents to load, even just plain copying and pasting.

In years gone by my prescribed course of action would be to flatten the machine and re-install everything from scratch: Windows, apps and utilities. And this certainly does some good.

But last week I wanted to see what would happen if I simply migrated the contents of my HDD to a Solid State Drive (SSD), a 256GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro to be exact.

Regular readers of DEVELOP3D will have seen our HDD / SSD comparisons. But these have always been on virgin machines – before the dreaded software rot has set in. How would an SSD cope with a four-year old mess of a Windows 7 OS? I’m pleased to report the result has been nothing short of incredible.

PNY Prevail 5K

SOLID STATE DRIVES: FOUR OF THE BEST for CAD

PNY’s professionally focused Prevail family is all about reliability and endurance, and PNY places a big emphasis on the number of “Program and Erase” cycles drives can do before they wear out. Most consumer SSDs are rated from 1K to 3K cycles, while enterprise SSDs go from 5K to 10K. The new Prevail 5K is specifically designed for heavy workstation workloads and is backed up with a 5-year warranty.

An extra £40 will get you a 240GB Prevail Elite, which is rated at 10K. This is likely to interest those who work with particularly disk intensive CAE or rendering workflows as it helps ensure the drive doesn’t slow down from flash cells wearing out.

Price

£179 (£0.75 per GB)

Capacity

240GB (also available in 120GB and 480GB)

Warranty

5 year limited

Website

pny-europe.com/ssd

Application benchmark (smaller is better) SolidWorks Pack and Go (secs)

18.5

AS SSD benchmark Sequential read / write (MB/sec) (bigger is better)

508 / 306

4k random read / write (MB/sec) (bigger is better)

21 / 82

4K-64Thrd random read / write (MB/sec) (bigger is better)

209 / 240

Access time read / write (ms) (smaller is better)

0.129 / 0.256

WS12 NOVEMBER 2013 DEVELOP3D.COM/HARDWARE

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT.indd 12

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Like to ach with mem

The high s small perfo But th

The Ex to

ut asis an do om 1K K.

y rranty.

ated at ularly nsure out.

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

My machine now boots in 50 seconds but, most importantly, all the startup programs have loaded by the time the stopwatch reaches 75secs. Even during these 25 seconds I can open Outlook and it’s done in a few seconds. If I wait until startup is complete, launching iTunes and Firefox is pretty much instant. Even heavyweight tools like SolidWorks load in less than 10 seconds.

But best of all the machine feels so much more responsive. Double click a folder and it opens instantly. Copy some files (even gigabytes of data) and it’s done in a flash.

I no longer have to plan my actions with military precision. I can open multiple applications and save huge CAD models all at the same time, and my workstation just takes everything in its stride. Doing something similar with my old HDD would have rendered my machine unusable for a good five minutes, leaving me sat there twiddling my thumbs.

For fear of sounding like a technology evangelist, an SSD is probably the best workstation upgrade you can make. It really can transform your machine – even one with years of DLL rot. It all means less waiting, less frustration, and a much more fluid environment for design. And with decent 120GB drives now available for well under £100 it doesn’t have to cost the Earth.



I no longer have to plan my actions with military precision. I can open multiple applications and save huge CAD models all at the same time, and my workstation just takes everything in its stride



Migrate in Minutes When it comes to migrating from HDD to SSD, things aren’t quite as simple as you might expect. With a straight ‘clone’ there’s a strong possibility that the drive won’t be aligned properly, which will result in reduced performance and increased wear.

Aligning your drive can be a daunting task for beginners so the easiest way is to use a dedicated migration software tool that does everything for you. Such tools can be particularly useful when moving to a SSD of lower capacity.

The clue is in the name with Paragon Migrate Os to ssD 3.0 ($19.99), a Wizard-based tool for Windows that takes the pain out of migration. The software is easy to use and handles the entire migration in just a few clicks.

Specific folders can be omitted so everything fits when migrating to smaller-capacity drives and it automatically aligns copied system partitions.

It takes less than 15 minutes to clone a 150GB drive over SATA 3.0. The software also works over USB, providing you have a drive adapter, but speeds will be slower.

One bonus of buying a Samsung SSD is that it comes bundled with free samsung Data Migration software.

The Wizard-based software is similar to Paragon’s tool, automatically aligning the partition. However, instead of allowing users to exclude specific folders in order to fit the destination drive, it filters out user-defined file types, such as AVIs and MP3s. Unfortunately this is not customisable, so there’s no automatic way to exclude CAD files, but some manual file management prior to migration can sort this.

Other cloning options include norton ghost, acronis true image HD or easeus todo Backup (free for home use) and be sure to check out the upgrade kits that often include migration software and conversion hardware.

Alternatively, you can start from scratch with a fresh Windows install which properly aligns the SSD from the go.

sanDisk extreme ii

samsung ssD 840 Pro

samsung ssD 840 evo

Like most SSDs, the Extreme II relies on MLC flash memory to achieve its low price/GB, but it also has a trick up its sleeve with something called nCache. This is based on faster SLC memory and is specifically designed to boost write speeds.

The Samsung 840 Pro SSD may be over a year old, but it still impresses with its exceptional random and sustained read / write performance. As the name suggests it is specifically focused on professional users, with CAD very much in sights.

The drive uses 1GB of nCache to accumulate small writes at high speed before flushing to MLC. nCache is optimised for the small files used by Windows, so should improve overall system performance rather than speed when writing large CAD files.

But that’s not to say it doesn’t save CAD data incredibly quickly.

The Extreme II SSD is also focused on endurance and qualified to deliver 80 terabytes written (TBW) over its lifetime.

Samsung claims the 840 Pro SSD will maintain its high performance over the entire life of the drive, even when it’s more than half full. And the South Korean manufacturer predicts that if writing 43GB/day, which it describes as a typical use scenario for heavy 3D mechanical CAD, the SSD 840 Pro would last over 100 years. The warranty doesn’t stretch quite that far, but there’s a solid five years for piece of mind

This latest addition to the Samsung 840 SSD range stands out for its high capacities, which go up to an impressive 1TB. But as it’s essentially a high-performance consumer SSD, we probably wouldn’t recommend it as a system drive unless you’re on a particularly tight budget.

Here a 500GB, 750GB or 1TB 840 EVO could be used for data, while a more professionally-focused 120GB or 250GB SSD does the more demanding read / write work for OS and applications.

£137 (£0.57 per GB)

£149 (£0.58 per GB)

£333 (£0.44 per GB)

240GB (also available in 120GB and 480GB)

256GB (also available in 128GB and 512GB)

750GB (also available in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB and 1TB)

5 year limited

5 year limited

3 year limited

sandisk.com/ssd

samsung.com/ssd

samsung.com/ssd

18.6

18.0

19.9

515 / 473

510 / 486

502 / 484

30 / 90

33 / 111

40 / 117

352 / 279

373 / 324

377 / 325

0.043 / 0.042

0.047 / 0.030

0.041 / 0.029

Instead, we see it as an ideal replacement for a slower HDD in a traditional SSD / HDD setup, for those that want to load and save huge CAD datasets at lightning quick speeds.

DEVELOP3D.COM/HARDWARE NOVEMBER 2013 WS13

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT.indd 13

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PNY’s PREVAIL and PREVAIL ELITE Professional SSDs are designed to provide professionals with an eMLC NAND Flash memory drive, designed for use in workstations, servers, storage and NAS solutions.

Workstations can benefit greatly from an SSD, and the PNY Prevail Elite is an example of a drive that can drastically increase productivity and creativity. Professionals such as designers and engineers require both reliability and excellent performance when using the most demanding applications.

When compared with HDDs, PNY Prevail SSDs will significantly increase a workstation’s random read/write speeds, allowing users to optimize their workflows.

Time to open applications

INVENTOR HDD + HDD SSD + HDD SSD + SSD

|

SOLIDWORKS

Time to open large assemblies

|

CATIA

Time in seconds Test done by Mr. Rick Schulz, working as an editor for CAD.de

DABS

www.dabs.com T 0870-429-3825

INVENTOR

|

SOLIDWORKS

Time to save large assemblies

|

CATIA

INVENTOR

|

SOLIDWORKS

|

CATIA

Test Setup : Intel Xeon E5-1650 / Intel C606 chipset / 32 GB – NVIDIA Quadro 4000 - HDD Seagate ST1500DM003 1,5 TB / 7200 rpm / 64 MB cache - SSD PNY Prevail 240 GB - Windows 7 64bit SP1 Autodesk Inventor 2013 64bit 533 parts / 320 MB - Dassault SolidWorks 2013 64bit 1317 parts / 403 MB - Dassault CATIA V5 R19 64 bit 770 parts / 424 MB

Insight

uk.insight.com/ T 0844-846-3333

Misco

www.misco.co.uk T 0800 038 8880

Scan Computers www.scan.co.uk T 0871-472-4747

To learn more visit www.pny.eu /quadro - Contact us: quadrouk@pny.eu © 2013 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, NVIDIA Quadro, Tesla, and CUDA are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. All company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated.

Professional SSDs_V2.indd 1

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

RAY TRACE accelerator

Imagination’s Caustic Series2 ray tracing acceleration boards are designed for one thing and one thing only. Greg Corke reports on this exciting new technology

R

In Rhino users can also define the number of passes: simply click the bottom right of the viewport and punch in a number.

There’s a lot more control in the Max and Maya plug-ins; the assumption being that users of those products are experts at rendering.

While the workflow still centres on viewport or preview rendering, Imagination reckons the Maya plug-in (the most mature of all the implementations) is getting to the point where it can be used as a final renderer. The latest 1.2 release includes features such as alpha channel support, motion blur and batch rendering.

renderers, the results are very impressive.

The quality approaches that of a final production render and as a result McNeel has exposed command line arguments in Rhino that enables Neon to render images sizes that are larger than the viewport. It’s a big shame there is no batch rendering mode, as there is with Maya, as this would help support Neon’s production rendering aspirations.

Of course, the big benefit is speed and with a three-year old Dell Precision T3500 workstation with a quad core Intel Xeon W3520 (2.66GHz) our scene rendered in 89 seconds with a R2100 card and 273 seconds without. Performance will vary according to the complexity of the The hardware scene and the number of CPU cores.

The Caustic cards feature what Imagination The SolidWorks 2014 implementation has calls Ray Trace Units (RTUs). The R2100 has not been officially released and is currently one of these while the R2500 has two. hidden within the SolidWorks code. It can Unlike GPU ray tracing, where the entire rendering job is usually loaded up to the GPU, only be exposed through a registry hack, which can be downloaded from the official the Caustic cards only carry out ray-tracing SolidWorks forum. calculations, leaving the CPU to perform all SolidWorks RealView Plus is pitched as a the shading computations. As shader maps and textures reside in the workstation’s system real time viewport that more closely matches what you can expect to see in your PhotoView memory this actually makes the R2100’s 4GB 360 renders than RealView does. We weren’t and R2500’s 16GB of on-board memory go bowled over by the results, and certainly weren’t much further. According to Imagination, the R2500 is capable of handling very large models, convinced that it was an accurate preview for PhotoView 360, but it’s still very early days and typically used in film or post-production. we will watch developments with interest.

As the CPU plays a very active role in the process it is important to match your Caustic card with the right workstation. A single Conclusion R2100 should work fine in most multi-core Caustic’s RTU boards are a very exciting single CPU workstations, but the R2500 needs proposition for ray trace rendering. While the Ray tracing in the viewport a dual CPU machine, the more cores the technology gives the distinct impression of a The focus for the Caustic cards is to bring better. The CPU can get taxed quite heavily work in progress it’s clear there’s plenty more interactive ray trace rendering into the to come, both from hardware and software. viewport, acting as a preview for a final render. when rendering, though this appears to depend on the complexity of the textures and Priced at $495 and $995 respectively the In product development this means designers R2100 and R2500 offer an exceptionally are able to use photorealism much earlier on in the number of cores. On a single processor low-cost entry to a co-processor market that is the process to help evaluate form and materials. quad core Xeon we found CPU utilisation hit It’s possible to play with lights/environments, 70%. On a dual processor 12 core Xeon it only really starting to hot up. Nvidia (Tesla), AMD (FirePro) and Intel (Xeon Phi) are all jostling camera settings and materials and get very fast reached 30%. In both instances it was still possible to use the workstation for other tasks. for position. As with Nvidia iray the success of feedback on how these will affect the scene.

The cards will fit pretty much any workstation Caustic’s OpenRL technology will no doubt The progressive renderer refines the image and installation is easy. The half-length R2100 boil down to application support. Starting with each pass and at low resolutions you can needs a x8 PCIe Gen 2.0 slot, while the full with 3D animation software, the technology get pretty good feedback in seconds. is now finding its way into CAD. It will be With the Rhino and SolidWorks integrations length R2500 a x16. Power consumption is extremely low — 30W and 60W respectively — interesting to see where it pops up next. the Caustic renderer is completely integrated so neither card needs to draw additional power ■ caustic.com into the viewport. There are no controls; you from the PSU, unlike GPU compute boards simply change the viewport render mode as you would when swapping between wireframe like the 225W Nvidia Tesla K20. and shaded views. In Rhino you turn on ‘Raytraced with Neon’ whereas in SolidWorks On test 2014 it’s called ‘RealView Plus’.

The Rhino Neon plug in is a As everything takes place in the viewport the 30MB download and installation model remains fully interactive at all times. You is easy. While Neon is designed can even make edits, but if changes are made to be a preview renderer for the The R2500 features the ray trace render starts again from scratch. native Rhino and Brazil offline two dedicated Ray

ay trace rendering is no walk in the park. It’s a very compute intensive process, resulting in multi-core CPUs or GPUs getting all hot and bothered.

While CPUs and GPUs do an excellent job, they are both general-purpose processors which can perform all sorts of tasks. You can drive a screw with a hammer, as they say, but the fact is CPUs and GPUs are not optimised for the code that simulates how light reflects and refracts off objects.

One alternative is to use hardware that has been specifically designed for ray trace rendering. This approach is nothing new: remember the ARTVPS RenderDrive?

Imagination Technologies, a firm best known for its mobile processors, is now taking a fresh look at ray trace hardware. Earlier this year it unveiled the Caustic Series2 R2100 and R2500 ray tracing add-in boards and plug-ins (Caustic Visualizers) for 3ds Max and Maya.

The technology also has the backing of software developers: McNeel’s Rhino 5 Neon viewport plug-in can be accelerated by the Caustic cards as can Dassault Systèmes’ RealView Plus plug in for SolidWorks 2014.

All of these rendering technologies, which are based on Imagination’s PowerVR OpenRL technology, also work with CPUs. They just render faster with the Caustic cards.

Trace Units (RTUs)

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

WORKSTATIONS

From single CPU ‘Haswell’ Core i5 to dual CPU ‘Ivy Bridge’ Xeon now is a great time to be buying a workstation. Greg Corke takes a look at some of the options

C

Details of all benchmarks can be found at tinyurl.com/D3Dbench

onsidering the bewildering array of processors on offer buying a workstation can be a bit of a minefield.

For dual CPU workstations, ideal for users of rendering, simulation and CAM software, the big news is the new Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 chip family, based on Intel’s Ivy Bridge-EP architecture.

Ivy Bridge-EP is a so-called tick in Intel’s tick-tock development cycle, which means it’s an evolution, rather than a revolution.

But there are some important new features including faster memory and better

performance per watt.

GHz for GHz the new Xeon E5-2600 v2 only offers a small improvement over the original ‘Sandy Bridge’ Xeon E5-2600 but, more importantly, the maximum clock speed and number of cores has been increased.

For example, Intel’s new flagship workstation chip, the Xeon E5-2687W v2 (3.4GHz) (8 core), is a whole 0.3GHz faster than the Xeon E5-2687W (3.1GHz) (8 core) that it replaces, so it should give a decent boost in all applications.

And while the original Xeon E5-2600 family peaked at 8 cores per chip, the Xeon

E5-2600 v2 family goes up to 10 or 12, which makes it attractive for ray trace rendering.

For mainstream CAD, single CPU machines are of most interest and here there’s a choice of ‘Ivy Bridge’ or newer ‘Haswell’ chips.

‘Haswell’ is found in fourth generation Core (i3, i5 and i7) and Xeon E3-1200 v3 chips. GHz for GHz it is faster than ‘Ivy Bridge’, but is limited to four cores per CPU whereas Ivy Bridge offers up to six. The new six core ‘Ivy Bridge’ Intel Core i7-4930K, for example, is an interesting choice for CAD users who also want to boost rendering or simulation software.

Fujitsu Celsius W530power

Scan 3XS GW-MAX X1 Nvidia Maximus Certified

Processor (CPU)

Quad Core Intel Core i5-4570 ‘Haswell’ (3.2GHz)

Six Core Intel Core i7-4930K ‘Ivy Bridge’ (clocked to 4.4GHz)

Memory (RAM)

8GB (2 x 4GB) 1,600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC memory

32GB (4 x 8GB) Corsair 1,600MHz DDR3

Graphics (GPU)

Nvidia Quadro K2000 (2GB GDDR5) (311.15 driver)

Nvidia Quadro K4000 (3GB GDDR5) + Nvidia Tesla K20 (5GB GDDR5) (320.78 driver)

Storage

1TB Western Digital WD1003FBYX hard drive

256GB Samsung 840 PRO SSD + 2TB Seagate Barracuda

Motherboard

Fujitsu motherboard (Intel C226 chipset)

Asus P9X79 PRO motherboard (Intel X79 chipset)

Size (W x D x H)

175mm x 419mm x 395mm

232mm x 464mm x 523mm

Operating System

Microsoft Windows 8 Professional 64-bit (Win 7 available)

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Warranty

3 year on site warranty

3 year warranty - 1st year onsite, 2nd and 3rd year return to base (parts & labour)

Website

fujitsu.com

3xs.scan.co.uk

CAM (Delcam PowerMill 2010)

i) 170 ii) 300 iii) 438

i) 124 ii) 162 iii) 212

CAE (SolidWorks 2010 Simulation)

94

73

Rendering (3ds Max Design 2011)

309

144

CAD (SolidWorks 2013 SPECapc graphics composite)

N/A (benchmark does not run on Windows 8)

6.33

CAD (PTC Creo 2.0 SPECapc graphics composite)

4.19

6.77

Price

£959

£4,544

CPU benchmarks (smaller is better)

Graphics benchmarks (bigger is better)

WS16 NOVEMBER 2013 DEVELOP3D.COM/HARDWARE

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT.indd 16

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2x

64

GHz)

uda

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

CPU rendering - 3ds Max Design 2011 (smaller is better)

Fujitsu Celsius W530power

InterPro E-Series E200IBE

Fujitsu i)* Fujitsu ii)* Fujitsu iii)*

309

Scan 3XS GW-MAX X1

Lenovo ThinkStation D30

CAM (Multitasking) - Delcam PowerMill (smaller is better)

438 124 162 212

InterPro IPW-DX8 Lenovo i)* Lenovo ii)* Lenovo iii)*

138

InterPro i)* InterPro ii)* InterPro iii)*

85

50

300

Scan i)* Scan ii)* Scan iii)*

144

100

150

200

250

300

350

0

101

190 211 242 170 173 179

WS i)* WS ii)* WS iii)*

Workstation Specialists 77 WS2880

0

170

182 183 187

100

* denotes number of concurrent tests

200

300

400

Lenovo ThinkStation D30

InterPro E-Series E200IBE

Workstation Specialists WS2880

2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon E5-2637 v2 ‘Ivy Bridge’ (3.5GHz)

2 x Ten Core Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2 ‘Ivy Bridge’ (2.80GHz)

2 x Twelve Core Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 ‘Ivy Bridge’ (2.70GHz)

64GB (8 x 8GB) PC3-12800 1,600MHz DDR3 ECC RDIMM

64GB (8 x 8GB) DDR-3 1,866MHz ECC Registered (PC3-15000)

64GB (8 x 8GB) 1,600MHz DDR3

Nvidia Quadro K5000 (4GB GDDR5) (311.50 driver)

Nvidia Quadro K5000 (4GB GDDR5) (320.86 driver)

Nvidia Quadro K4000 (3GB GDDR5) (320.49 driver)

256GB SSD HDD + 2TB SATA HDD 7,200RPM

240GB PNY Prevail SSD + 3TB Seagate Barracuda HDD

512GB Toshiba THNSNH512GBST SSD + 2 x 500GB Western Digital VelociRaptor WD5000HHTZ (RAID 0) + 2TB Seagate Barracuda

Lenovo motherboard (Intel C600 Series Chipset)

Supermicro X9DAi motherboard (Intel C602 chipset)

WS motherboard (Intel C600 Series Chipset)

210mm x 602mm x 485mm

193mm x 525mm x 424mm

220mm x 500mm x 500mm

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

3 years base warranty (parts & labour onsite)

3 year Return to Base (RTB) (Inc. Parts and Labour)

3 year standard hardware warranty with Next Business Day Engineer Response

lenovo.com

ipworkstations.com

workstationspecialists.com

i) 190 ii) 211 iii) 242

i) 170 ii) 173 iii) 179

i) 182 ii) 183 iii) 187

95

90

93

138

85 (HyperThreading turned off)*

77 (HyperThreading turned off)*

6.11

6.28

5.21

6.93

6.38

5.76

£4,800

£6,150

£6,460

500

DEVELOP3D.COM/HARDWARE NOVEMBER 2013 WS17

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Maximise Productivity 3D Design, Visualisation, Analysis/Simulation, Rendering, and more…

Image Courtesy of Sanders Shiers

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+44 (0) 800 180 4801

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07/11/2013 09:18

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

Graphics composite - solidWorks 2013 speCapc (bigger is better)

Graphics composite - ptC Creo 2.0 speCapc (bigger is better)

Fujitsu Celsius W530power N/A

Fujitsu Celsius W530power

Scan 3XS GW-MAX X1

6.33

Lenovo ThinkStation D30

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6.93

InterPro E-Series E200IBE

5.21

3

6.77

Lenovo ThinkStation D30

6.28

Workstation Specialists WS2880

0

Scan 3XS GW-MAX X1

6.11

InterPro E-Series E200IBE

4.19

6.38

Workstation Specialists WS2880

6

70

81

2

3

Fujitsu Celsius W530poWer

3Xs GW-MAX X1 NViDiA MAXiMus CertiFieD

The Celsius W530 is Fujitsu’s new entry-level workstation, a jack-of-all-trades that combines many of the features of the previous generation Celsius W420 and Celsius W520.

It offers plenty of choice for processor, graphics and (particularly) storage, but does so in a mini-tower chassis that comes in at a relatively compact 175 x 419 x 395mm.

Our test machine’s Intel Core i5-4570 is very much at the sweet spot for mainstream 3D CAD. Running at 3.2GHz it provides the all-important raw performance but with no support for Intel HyperThreading, those who ray trace render will miss out. Here, an upgrade to a Hyper-Threaded Core i7 or Xeon E3 v3 should reduce render times by 10%.

The Nvidia Quadro K2000 GPU with 2GB of memory is a great fit for mainstream CAD delivering a solid, if not spectacular, score in our Creo test. Even under our high load tests the Celsius W530 remained incredibly quiet in operation.

Considering this is an entrylevel machine the W530power edition can handle some serious storage with support for up to five drives (1 x 2.5-inch and 4 x 2.5/3.5-inch), adding up to an incredible 17TB if you max it out.

With such large capacities available, our test machine’s 1TB

Scan’s new Nvidia Maximuscertified 3XS workstation is a specialist piece of kit, optimised specifically for CUDA-enabled rendering or simulation apps.

The system works by farming out heavy duty ray trace rendering or simulation solver calculations to a dedicated Nvidia Tesla K20 compute GPU, leaving the CPU free for other tasks.

We tested with SolidWorks 2014 and Bunkspeed Pro 2014, one of a handful of design viz applications that are CUDAenabled through the Nvidia iray ray trace renderer.

We imported a SolidWorks model into Bunkspeed, applied materials and rendered. The Tesla K20 then went all out on the ray tracing calculations but you wouldn’t think it. The machine remained fully responsive at all times, leaving us free to design unhindered in SolidWorks. Here, 3D graphics tasks are dedicated to the Quadro K4000 GPU while the powerful six core Core i74930K CPU does the rest.

Scan has worked its overclocking magic with this brand new Ivy Bridge chip.

Architecturally, it may be a generation behind Haswell, but because Scan has accelerated it to 4.4GHz, it’s lightning quick.

Indeed, it means the 3XS GWMAX X1 tops the charts in our lightly threaded Powermill and SolidWorks Simulation tests.

Western Digital WD1003FBYX HDD does feel a little anaemic, but it should be noted that this is 1TB of enterprise quality storage, commonly found in read / writeintensive servers.

Standard HDDs are also available, which should save a bit of cash and, for those who place a higher value on performance, there are plenty of SSDs to choose from.

One of the best things about the Celsius W530 is that it is incredibly easy to add or replace drives thanks to Fujitsu’s superb Easyrails, which already populate the easily accessible drive bays.

The W530 is an impressive addition to Fujitsu’s Celsius workstation family and its engineers must be applauded for making maintenance so easy, particularly in an entry-level machine. At £959 our Celsius W530power edition review machine is also competitively priced, but you can shave £60 off this straight away by opting for the standard Celsius W530 which reduces potential for GPU and hard drive upgrades.

■ £959 ■ fujitsu.com

5.76

4

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The good news is big power doesn’t mean big noise and Scan keeps things very quiet with a Corsair H80i Hydro CPU water cooler. Clamping itself onto the 130W Core i7 processor this tidy, self-contained, unit exchanges heat with a radiator at the rear of the machine. Fan noise is hardly audible, even with the K20 and Core i7 running at full pelt.

The system comes with a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD, an excellent choice for OS and applications. In addition you get a 2TB Seagate Barracuda for data and 32GB of Corsair 1,600MHz DDR3 memory, plenty for large CAD or simulation models.

If you use one of the growing number of CUDA-enabled applications, the 3XS GW-MAX X3 is an excellent choice. It lets you design and render or design and simulate at the same time with no slow down. If you don’t, drop the £2,500 Tesla K20 GPU, and you still have a superb highperformance CAD machine with enough CPU cores for occasional rendering or simulation.

■ £4,544 ■ 3xs.scan.co.uk

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InterPro Ad.indd 1

07/11/2013 09:20

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

lenovo thInkStatIon D30 When it comes to dual Xeons most manufacturers pack in the CPU cores when they send machines in for review. But while a pair of 10 or 12 core Ivy Bridge Xeons will slash ray trace render times, what if you’re into FEA or CFD and don’t want to spend the Earth?

Solving complex simulation problems doesn’t necessarily require so many cores and this is where lower spec chips like the Xeon E5-2637 v2 come into play.

With two of these 3.5GHz quad core chips inside Lenovo’s ThinkStation D30 there’s plenty to excite FEA and CFD users.

Doubling up on Xeon CPUs not only swells your cores; it significantly increases the memory bandwidth, which is important for simulation solvers.

These two Xeons have eight memory channels between them compared to a mainstream Core i7 system, which has two.

With 64GB RAM there’s plenty of capacity for complex problems and ECC support will correct errors should they occur. This could be particularly important for long runs as the last thing you want when a simulation has been going for days is for it to crash.

Moving large datasets into memory is well handled by a fast

InterPro e-SerIeS e200IBe

256GB Samsung SSD. This is supplemented by a mainstream 2TB 7,200RPM HDD, though with three free 3.5-inch hard drives there’s plenty of scope to add more storage, including fast 10K and 15K drives.

With all fingers pointing towards simulation the Quadro K5000 GPU could be considered overkill, with the K4000 or K2000 being perfectly suitable (and cheaper) alternatives. It all depends on workflow though and should you need some graphics oomph, it’s impossible to argue with the excellent scores in our SolidWorks and Creo tests.

The ThinkStation D30 is quiet, solid and well built, but it’s also exceedingly large. To our mind there’s little benefit over the ThinkStation C30, which can squeeze the same components into an amazingly compact chassis, but is limited to three hard drives and 256GB RAM. ■ £4,800 ■ lenovo.com

tests. With 4GB of GDDR5 memory this high-end GPU should also be a good partner for texture heavy design viz.

64GB of ECC memory gives InterPro’s new ‘Enterprise class’ workstation delivers two ten core plenty of capacity for large models and with 12 of the 16 chips in a remarkably compact DIMM slots still free, lots of chassis. Its Xeon E5-2680 v2s room for expansion. aren’t the fastest ten core chips Storage is more standard, out there (at 2.8GHz they’re a full 0.2GHz shy of the Xeon E5-2690 combining a 240GB PNY Prevail SSD for OS and apps and a 3TB v2) but costing just over £1,000 per chip, they deliver good price / Seagate Barracuda HDD for data. performance. And they certainly And there’s room for two more in this compact Supermicro chassis, pack some punch. which is certainly smaller than Rendering in KeyShot is impressive, with scenes refining most dual processor workstations and great for space constrained in seconds, rather than the environments. The trade off is it’s minutes it takes our quad core quite tricky to get to the drives, office workstation. And it does which are housed in a metal all this extremely quietly, even cage that needs to be rotated 90 when both 130W Xeon CPUs have been flat out for some time. degrees to get access.

InterPro has put together an They say numbers don’t lie, impressive machine for design but in our 3ds Max render test viz users that’s aggressively it seems they do. Our initial priced. It’s well balanced in terms render times were slower than of CPU and GPU and there’s expected so we had to turn off plenty of room for expansion.

Hyper-Threading to get a more realistic score. mental ray in 3ds ■ £6,150 ■ ipworkstations.com Max 2011 is limited to 32 threads so two physical cores weren’t being used. We would expect to shave 10% off the render time with HyperThreading turned on, which would be possible in 3ds max 2014, as it would in virtually all new ray trace rendering apps.

Fuelled by a powerful Nvidia Quadro K5000 GPU, the machine romped through our graphics

WorkStatIon SPecIalIStS WS2880 Workstation Specialists has not scrimped on Intel’s new ‘Ivy Bridge’ Xeons, going all out with two twelve core E5-2697 v2 chips.

With the most cores possible in a Xeon workstation it’s no surprise it absolutely blitzed our render test, even with Hyper-Threading turned off (see InterPro review). But this isn’t just about numbers in a spreadsheet, it’s about benefiting from new workflows.

With such power under the hood the design, render, tweak process can become absolutely seamless. Yes, it will still take time to create final high res stills and animations, but users

can get exceedingly quick feedback on test renders, meaning more iterations and, hopefully, better designs.

Even when hammering both CPUs the WS2880 is impressively quiet. We rendered a 100-frame animation in KeyShot and had to make a real effort to hear the fans.

The downside of the E5-2697 v2 is that it only runs at 2.7GHz. Some may notice an overall performance hit, particularly when compared to the eight-core 3.4GHz Intel Xeon E5-2687W v2, but there’s no beating two of these in a render race and they’re great for multi-tasking as shown in our Delcam PowerMill test. The good news is with 18 different Xeon models available there’s plenty of scope to find an ideal balance.

The WS2880 is kitted out with a midrange Quadro K4000 GPU. It’s a good solid graphics option, though hardcore design viz users might prefer an upgrade to a K5000.

The combination of mid-range GPU and 2.7GHz CPUs contribute to the slightly lower scores in our 3D graphics tests.

WS has invested heavily in storage, including a total of four drives. Windows is installed on a high quality 512GB Toshiba SSD, which not only gives ample room for applications, but plenty in reserve for virtual memory and hibernation. This could be important considering the WS2880 has 64GB RAM and 8 slots free for the future.

There’s also a RAID 0 array for data consisting of two 500GB 10,000RPM drives, delivering impressive read / write speeds and a standard 2TB HDD for local backup or archived datasets.

Overall, the WS280 is an excellent machine for high-end design viz, balancing topend CPUs with fast storage and delivering unrivalled performance for ray trace rendering.

■ £6,460 ■ workstationspecialists.com

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WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

MOBILE WORKSTATIONS DELL PRECISION M3800 Dell’s latest 15.6-inch mobile workstation comes in at an incredible 2kg.

Greg Corke gives his first impressions of the ultra portable Precision M3800.

T

128GB mini-card could be used for OS and apps while a 1TB HDD is reserved for data.

The Precision M3800 comes with a choice of two Gorilla Glass FHD or QHD+ UltraSharp displays. Detailed CAD models on our test machine’s QHD+ display (3,200 x 1,800) certainly looked stunning with crisp lines and vibrant colours. However, with such a high pixel density we did find some of the icons were too small, even with the Windows settings ramped up.

With nearly three times as many pixels as the standard FHD display ((1,920 x 1,080) we would also expect the QHD+ screen to have a small but significant impact on 3D performance. Choosing a display needs careful consideration.

Both displays feature 5-finger multitouch as standard, which will have the greatest appeal to users of Windows 8. For more traditional input the gesture enabled multi-touch touchpad is of a good size, which makes it useful for CAD. Of course, for detailed work there’s no substitute for an external mouse, which can plug into one of the four USB ports (3 x USB 3.0 and 1 x Experience suggests that this 2GB GPU USB 2.0). All four ports feature PowerShare, should be sufficient for part and small assembly modelling but may start to show its which is great for charging SmartPhones limitations as models get larger, particularly and other devices as the power remains on even when the machine is off. when using real time effects such as In conclusion, the Precision M3800 looks SolidWorks RealView. to be an interesting proposition for those The choice of core specs may be limited, seeking workstation-class performance and but the M3800 certainly makes up for this impressive portability without compromising when it comes to storage. Users have a on screen size. Some may find the specs number of options for the main 2.5-inch restrictive — and if you want to beef up the drive including a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) CPU, GPU and memory then look at the (up to 1TB); Solid State Hybrid Hard Drive Precision M4800 — but if you’re looking for (SSHD) (500GB with 8GB SSD); or Solid State Drive (SSD) (256GB or 512GB). There’s a highly mobile machine for part and small assembly modelling then the M3800 should also room for Solid State Mini-Card storage hit the spot. We look forward to putting it device (mSATA) (up to 512GB), which gives users a cost effective way to get performance through its paces in the New Year.

■ dell.co.uk/precision and capacity in the one machine. Here, a

he problem with most mobile workstations is that they’re not particularly mobile. Most 15-inch models weigh in at just under 3kg; 17-inch models even more.

While this might not sound like a lot, try carrying half a dozen baked bean cans around for the day and you’ll soon get the idea.

Dell’s new Precision M3800 is specifically designed to deliver workstation-class components in a lightweight package. This has been attempted before but has often been at the expense of screen size and graphics performance (remember the 14inch Dell Precision M2400?).

With Dell’s latest offering there are no such compromises: the Precision M3800 is an entirely new class of mobile workstation. It sports an expansive 15.6-inch screen but it still feels incredibly light in the hand.

Starting at 1.88kg it weighs less than a 13-inch MacBook Pro, from which it arguably takes many of its styling cues. And while its aluminium frame and lightweight carbon fibre base is not quite in the same league as the unibody aluminium chassis of the MacBook Pro, it does feel refined and well built.

But this is a bit like comparing apples with pears, for want of a better analogy.

The MacBook Pro may be a great all-round laptop, but the Dell Precision M3800 is an entirely different beast; a proper 3D CAD mobile workstation, certified for a huge range of applications including Inventor, Catia, SolidWorks, Creo, and NX. Inside, Dell is very prescriptive with the core specifications and all models share the same CPU and GPU. This is quite unusual for a laptop and partly down to the strict thermal limits dictated by the compact chassis.

Rated at 37W and 45W respectively the Intel Core i7-4702HQ CPU and Nvidia Quadro

K1100M GPU are pretty easy on power consumption and together they offer a good balance of performance, ideally suited to entry-level to mid-range 3D CAD. Both have dedicated fans to help minimize throttling when the processors really start to heat up.

The Intel Core i7-4702HQ is not the fastest ‘Haswell’ CPU out there — the Intel Core i7-4900MQ, available in the Dell Precision M4800, is a full 0.6GHz faster — but with a base clock speed of 2.2GHz (3.2GHz Turbo) it’s still a good spec for mainstream CAD. With four cores and eight threads there’s also power in reserve for rendering and simulation — though with a maximum of 16GB RAM datasets can’t get too big.

For graphics the Quadro K1100M is at the lower end of Nvidia’s Kepler family of mobile GPUs.

The hP ZBOOK 14

300g more than the 13-inch MacBook Air. The machine comes with a choice of dual core processors, maxing out at the Intel Core i7-4600U (2.1GHz, turbo up to 3.3GHz) and up to 16GB RAM.

With Dell concentrating on re-defining the 15-inch format factor mobile

workstation, HP is going all out on portability with its ZBook 14, which it describes as the world’s first workstation Ultrabook.

This lightweight 14-inch mobile workstation starts at an incredible 1.62kg, just

Professional 3D graphics comes courtesy of the AMD FirePro M4100 (1GB). All of these specs lean the machine towards entry-level 3D CAD. HP also places a big emphasis on serviceability with many of the

components being able to be replaced or upgraded without a screwdriver.

■ hp.co.uk/zworkstations

WS22 NOVEMBER 2013 DEVELOP3D.COM/HARDWARE

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT.indd 22

7/11/13 09:53:22

Cube specification: 140mm cubed build volume ABS & PLA materials Single printhead

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07/11/2013 15:36

WORKSTATION SPECIAL REPORT

3D CONNExION SPACEMOuSE WIRELESS 3Dconnexion cuts the cord for its latest 3D input device. Al Dean reports

W

hen we heard that 3Dconnexion was to release a new 3D input device we did wonder how it could improve on what is already a slick family of products.

The company has pretty much nailed the design of its 3D mice which, when used in conjunction with a standard computer mouse, provide exact control over 3D CAD models — simply push, pull, twist or tilt the 3Dconnexion controller cap to pan, zoom and rotate your model while the 2D mouse is held in the other hand to work directly with the CAD geometry on screen.

The SpaceMouse Wireless is a new addition to the entry-level end of the product range and does exactly what the name implies.

With the help of a small 2.4GHz micro receiver that pops into a spare USB port it does away with the untidy cable that trails from your workstation.

The device is powered by a Lithium-Ion battery that charges in around two hours via a micro-USB cable. It should give you a month of use between charges, based on 8 hours use per day, 5 days per week.

A warning light shows up red when it’s running low, but if that happens in the middle of the day, the device will also work

products are compatible with the latest and greatest versions of a big range of CAD tools (Inventor, SolidWorks, Rhino, PTC Creo, NX, Catia and Solid Edge).

In terms of build quality, it’s the same as the other products — these things are built like tanks and German ones at that.

The addition of the battery and the base redesign makes it more intuitive and stable on your desk.

The larger buttons make it more usable and the radial menus are excellent. They may be a simple addition, but they give you quick access to a larger number of commonly used operations.

All in all, considering this thing will only set you back £109, if you don’t own one of the family, the SpaceMouse Wireless is well worth a closer look.

The new on-screen radial menu provides convenient mouseclick access to four application commands

with the cable plugged in.

There’s more to the SpaceMouse Wireless than just cutting the cord. The subtle form of the SpaceMouse has been updated giving it a more squared off profile. This cures one of the problems with the existing products — that it’s easy to get orientation wrong and send your model skidding off the screen.

There has also been some redesign work on the two fully customisable buttons that sit on either side of the device, in that they’re now much larger and more accessible.

When pressed, each opens its own on-screen radial menu, providing convenient mouseclick access to four application commands.

The good news is that if you’ve already got a 3Dconnexion 3D mouse, you’ll get this feature for free simply through a driver update.

The latest driver also helps ensure the

■ 3dconnexion.co.uk

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