Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade

Transcription

1 Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade What you don t know about new workstations could be hurting your productivity, innovation and competitiveness. Sponsored by Lenovo and Intel: Produced by the editors of Desktop Engineering Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 1

2 Under Pressure IT NEVER CHANGES. Managers want new designs in less time, and clients want their projects completed with impossible schedules. Coming up with fresh concepts, digitally testing different ideas and then modeling the best ones all takes time. Time is the key element of doing great work and creating a competitive advantage. Design productivity improvement is the most effective way to get more design iterations in less time. It is imperative to shortening tight design schedules. But how do you make more time? Giving engineers a new workstation is really the foundation for innovation. You want them to compute as fast as they think. You don t want their computers slowing them down. Tom Salomone You use a faster workstation. The design cycle is taking more time than it should if you haven t upgraded your workstation recently, and you might not even realize it. Two silent killers of productivity are at work in many design engineers older workstations: larger models and advanced design software. The larger the model the more time it takes to compute, manipulate and store on the same system. On older workstations, large models sap your ability to innovate and your company s ability to compete. With a new workstation, the ability to work with larger models using the latest software is a boon to productivity. By some estimates, CAD model sizes double every two years. Does that sound extreme? Think about the amount of information tied to modern models from simulation data to the details needed to enable corporate collaboration initiatives, such as product lifecycle management (PLM). Couple that with the need to model larger assemblies and systems, and you have a recipe for sluggishness if you re still using a workstation designed for the workloads of the past. Even worse, some engineers are attempting to use computers designed for basic office tasks, or even consumer-grade PCs designed for gaming or the kids homework. Installing the latest engineering software on underpowered hardware can further decrease the speed with which you design. It seems counterintuitive that upgrading your design software can actually hurt your productivity, but software is designed to take advantage of the latest advances in hardware. At best, if your hardware hasn t advanced, those capabilities that could be saving you time and frustration are wasted. Engineers are busier than ever. They don t often have time to stop and think about the productivity gains they re missing out on by not upgrading their hardware. Simply put: Engineers don t know what they re missing. Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 2

3 Design Twice as Fast To prove this point, Lenovo put its own workstations to the test. It pitted a 2010 ThinkStation S20 against a 2013 ThinkStation S30 running SolidWorks The company could have used the most bare-bones S20 and a souped-up S30 to make the results look even more impressive, but it opted for a more balanced comparison. As Table 1 shows, both workstations were equipped with graphics cards from the middle of the range of cards they support, solid-state drives (SSDs) and the same amount of RAM. The results show that the newer workstation completed the SPECviewperf12 benchmarks for SolidWorks 2013 more than twice as fast as the three-year-old workstation. But lab tests, even purposefully conservative ones like Lenovo s, only go so far. Much like simulations, benchmarks need to be seen in the real world to get an accurate picture of the benefits to upgrading older workstations. ACME Scenic and Display is a good example: The 80-employee company, based in Portland, OR, routinely uses Trimble SketchUp, Autodesk AutoCAD and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks to design custom exhibits and displays. ACME Project Manager Tom Weiss recently upgraded to a Lenovo ThinkStation S30 and hasn t looked back. SolidWorks 2013 Comparison Lenovo ThinkStation S20 Lenovo ThinkStation S30 Year Shipped CPU Intel Xeon W3565 (3.2 GHz) Intel Xeon E5-1660v2 (3.7GHz) Memory 8GB 1333 MHz 8GB 1600 MHz Hard Drive Solid-State Drive Solid-State Drive Graphics Card NVIDIA FX1800 NVIDIA K2000 Seconds to Complete Design Tasks 549 seconds 227 seconds TABLE 1: On the SPECviewperf12 benchmark for SolidWorks 2013, the Lenovo ThinkStation S30 completed design tasks twice as fast as a three-year-old S20. Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 3

4 If Not Now, When? With all of the evidence in favor of workstation upgrades, why are many design engineers still limping along on three-year-old (or older) computers? Some of it is budgetary. Those who hold the purse strings may not have bothered to calculate the quick ROI of an upgrade, or may not fully understand that engineers have different computing needs than their co-workers in accounting or sales departments. Other reasons for keeping engineers from the computing power they need are cultural. People are comfortable with the status quo because they don t know what they are missing. Some are reluctant to make a change during a large project and there s always a large project. To get beyond the budgetary and cultural shortsightedness, look to the future. Models are going to continue to grow in size, and modern design software capabilities will continue to take advantage of the latest advances in computing hardware. Over the last three years, those hardware advances include more productive computational and graphics The ThinkStation P300 starts at $729 and is available in tower and small form factor models. processing via new architectures and more cores; faster memory speeds with error-correcting code memory that helps prevent data corruption; and the doubling of disk drive speeds thanks to SSDs. Virtualization where one workstation can run multiple operating systems or be divided to handle different tasks is becoming increasingly common, as is the use of multiple monitors. Processors, bus speeds, graphics cards and hard drives are all faster, says Lenovo s Tom Salomone. Engineers may think that hardware is just a little faster or the same, but the truth is it all adds up to let them work much, much faster. Take the new Lenovo ThinkStation P300 for example. The ThinkStation P300 is available with the latest Intel Xeon E3-1200v3 processor family as well as new 4th Generation Intel Core processor and ECC memory support for improved productivity and reliability. Professional workstation users run very advanced, specialized applications. The ThinkStation P300 features the processing power, graphics capabilities and ISV certifications, needed to run these applications smoothly, said Victor Rios, vice president and general manager, Workstation, Lenovo. But the ThinkStation P300 also gives these users a new level of customization. The new FLEX module provides a Fully Loaded Experience, offering customers truly unique configurations that match their specific project needs and goals. The FLEX module supports a combination of an ultra-slim optical drive, 29-in-1 media card reader, IEEE 1394 Firewire, and esata. It is designed to give users the option to add only the components they need, allowing customized productivityboosting configurations with added cost savings for vertical workflows. If you re looking for an easy way to prove a return on investment, the ThinkStation P300 starts at $729. It is available in tower and small form factor models. Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 4

5 I m not afraid to rework designs, because I know I can do it quickly. Clients don t think anything of asking for a new version within an hour or two, and now they ll get it. Tom Weiss, ACME Scenic and Display It doesn t take much time with the ThinkStation S30 to see that it is a far more powerful machine than our old desktops, he says. We even ran time tests on both machines. The ThinkStation S30 was easily 10 times faster, which means we get our work done sooner. Weiss replaced two five-year-old desktops with S30s equipped with 3.6GHz Intel Xeon E processors, 32GB of RAM, NVIDIA K2000 graphics cards and SSDs. The difference I notice is a much more smooth ability to multitask, Weiss says. A slower PC will not handle multitasking. In a production environment, several applications with multiple files open in each need to be run. The resulting lag time is a lot like bumper-to-bumper traffic no fun. Some of the files Weiss works with are 120MB or more. While crashes were a daily occurrence on his old workstation, Weiss can now have multiple files open in Solid- Works, AutoCAD and SketchUp at the same time along with typical office applications without fear of a crash. Real-World Comparison ACME Scenic and Display s Old Computers ACME Scenic and Display s New Lenovo ThinkStation S30 Year Shipped CPU Intel Core2 Duo (3 GHz) Intel Xeon E (3.6GHz) Memory 4GB MHz 32GB 1600 MHz Hard Drive Hard Disk Drive Solid-State Drive and Hard Disk Drive Graphics Card ATI Radeon HD 4800 NVIDIA Quadro K2000 Results of timed tests The ThinkStation S30 was easily 10 times faster. TABLE 2: What really impresses me about the S30 is that it not only handles all the heavy-duty design software, it allows me to do all my work quickly and multitask seamlessly, says ACME Scenic and Display s Tom Weiss. Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 5

6 Communicate the Return on Investment Many design engineers don t need to be convinced that newer, faster workstations are better than older, slower workstations. But how much better? Are they worth the investment? It s a no-brainer, says Tom Salomone, Engineering and AEC and Manufacturing Segment Marketing Manager at Lenovo. If anyone looks at it, they ll see they re definitely going to get the ROI. Let s take a look at it. The amount of time it takes to pay off a new workstation via increased productivity varies depending on how long you spend on your current workstation doing design engineering, how much of your salary that equals, how much time a new workstation would save you, and the price of a new workstation. As the example below shows, even keeping our calculations on the conservative end of the spectrum, you could spend $4,500 to save your company $9,000 per year. If you spend more time doing design work or opt for an entry-level workstation option, your ROI will be even more impressive. Some engineers would see a return on their new workstation investment in three or four months. An ROI Example Say you earn $80,000 a year and spend a third of your time actually using CAD software. That s about $27,000 a year devoted to design work on your old workstation. While Lenovo s benchmark tests show a new workstation could double your CAD productivity and ACME Scenic and Display s real-life experiences indicate a 10x speed boost for this example we ll be ultra-conservative and say you ll see a 33% increase to your design productivity by investing in a new workstation that costs between $3,000 and $6,000. THE ROI, THEN, WOULD BREAK DOWN AS FOLLOWS: Cost of new workstation: $4,500 Cost of your time: $80,000/year at 250 working days per year at 8 hours per day = $40 per hour Time you spend doing design work: About a third of an 8-hour day = 2.64 hours a day Time that could be saved doing design work on a new workstation: 33% of 2.64 hours a day = about 54 minutes per day at 250 working days per year = 225 hours per year Money that could be saved annually by upgrading: 225 hours per year at $40 per hour = $9,000 per year Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 6

7 Workstations Then and Now Processor then: Intel Xeon W3xxx, E5xxx and Xxxxx, max speed 3.33GHz (45 nm process), 4 cores max Processor now: Latest Intel Xeon E5 1600/2600 Processors (22 nm process) max speed 3.7GHz, 12 cores max RAM then: 6 slots, up to 48GB max, 1333MHz DDR3, ECC RAM now: 8 slots, up to 256GB max, support for 1600 and 1833MHZ DDR3, ECC Video card then: NVIDIA Quadro FX technology up to Quadro FX4800 with 1.5GB of memory Video card now: New NVIDIA Kepler technology up to NVIDIA Quadro K5000 with 4 GB of memory Hard drives then: Up to 10,000 rpm hard disk drives (HDD) Hard drives now: Up to 12 TB of storage, choices of SAT and SAS HDD, solid-state drives (SSD) and Hybrid drives 6 Gb/s vs. 3Gb/s) A comparison of typical components in a three-year old workstation vs. a new workstation. A professional workstation is more than the sum of its parts. A modern workstation is a balanced system based on the current processor, memory, storage and graphics technology that your engineering software needs. Upgrading to a new workstation ensures all of these components work together to ensure the optimum engineering computing experience. Innovation Is Imperative It s easy to measure speed vs. costs to make the case for investing in a new workstation, but it s what you do with that extra time that matters. Engineers with more computing power have more time to try new things and be more inventive. They re empowered to figure out better ways to do their jobs, and their jobs are not just supporting a business in many cases, they are the business. A faster, more powerful workstation gives engineers time to create new products with better capabilities, or redesign existing products to be cheaper and more competitive. The speed of this new workstation allows us to revise our designs several times a day if need be, Weiss says. We can re-render, republish and redistribute our drawings to get feedback from clients the same day two to three times a day, even. It can keep up with me, which is unusual, Weiss continues. The faster our machine, Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 7

8 the smoother our day is and the more we can accomplish. Giving engineers a new workstation is really the foundation for innovation, Salomone says. You want them to compute as fast as they think. You don t want their computers slowing them down. Weiss notes the effects of upgrading have rippled throughout ACME Scenic and Display, even if his co-workers don t realize the root cause of it. We are able to turn around requests very rapidly now, he says. There s sort of a built-in expectation that we can do what we need to do now. That s satisfying to the people involved in the sales process. They re not being turned away when they bring client requests to us. I m not afraid to rework designs, because I know I can do it quickly, Weiss adds. Clients don t think anything of asking for a new version within an hour or two, and now they ll get it. Upgrading to a modern, professional workstation gives design engineers the ability to digitally prototype multiple iterations of a design, exceed clients expectations, and find new opportunities to pull ahead of the competition all in the same amount of time they would have spent just getting by on their old workstations. There s an opportunity cost to not upgrading your workstation, says Salomone. If you don t have the computing power, you re not going to think of different ways to use it. When people can, they will. Keep Mobile in Mind IF YOU RE NOT PREPARED TO WORK ANYWHERE, your competitors might be. Mobile workstation speeds increasingly compete with basic desktop workstations. More and more, engineers are finding they don t have to choose between power and portability. According to Lenovo s Tom Salomone, more than two-thirds of design engineers with mobile computers also use a desktop workstation. Most people have mobile and desktop workstations, Salomone says. Mobile still has some limitations. People want bigger screens and access to more options; what s happened is they are putting more on the desktop to get better productivity, and you can t carry all of that. At the same time, engineers appreciate the ability to take their work on the road, or even just down the The ThinkPad W540 starts at $1,399 and is ISV cerrtified for more than 100 applications. hall. With the prices for mobile power dropping, design engineers are finding fewer reasons to not make mobile part of their design arsenal. Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 8

9 APPENDIX More Information Compare the capabilities of Lenovo s current ThinkStation workstations: Visit the Lenovo ThinkStation blog: Get the technical specifications of Lenovo s ThinkStations: Watch a video interview on how ACME Scenic and Display s Tom Weiss uses his new workstations: Download a testimonial from Weiss: acme_scenic_cs.pdf Visit ACME Scenic and Display s website: Listen to a podcast discussion among Desktop Engineering Senior Editor Kenneth Wong, Lenovo s Tom Salomone, and ACME Scenic and Display s Tom Weiss: This white paper is sponsored by Lenovo and Intel Corporation. It has been produced by Desktop Engineering as an educational resource for the engineering community Lenovo. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Lenovo products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Lenovo shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Intel, Xeon, and Core, are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. SolidWorks is a registered trademark of Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation. AutoCAD is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc. NVIDIA, Kepler and Quadro are registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. SketchUp is a registered trademark of Trimble Navigation Limited. Workstations: Now is the Time to Upgrade 9