Dell is coming up with new workstations on both Desktop (Tower) and Mobile platforms. The T-Series has three new tower models named T3610, T5610 and T7610. They use a chassis that is easy to maintain and built on the same design language and architecture than last year’s workstations. This is a bit of CPU refresh which is in sync with Intel’s own cycle, however, there are many new things worth pointing out.
First, those workstations use the Intel Cache Acceleration Software that can use a large (128GB/256GB) SSD drive as a cache for multi-terabytes datasets. If extreme SSD performance is required, it is also possible to add an enterprise PCIe SSD card. Finally, desktop users can add an Intel Xeon Phi co-processor 3120A PCIe card. The goal of this card is to accelerate massively parallel computations, not unlike GPU solutions would, but this is optimized for Intel Architecture (IA) code. Of course, using this requires application that actually support it.
On the mobile side, Dell brings the M4800 and M6800 workstation laptops to market. As usual, these are nearly as fast as desktop machines, so don’t expect to see something “thin and light” like an Ultrabook. Consider the specs: the workstation feature a qHD+ (3200×1800) display, which is nice, but not unheard of… but what is not common for laptops is to get GPUs with 8GB of video memory, 32GB of 1866MHz RAM and up to 3TB of storage across multiple disks which can be configured in a RAID array if needed. Finally, and this is my favorite part: the Dell mobile workstation can come with an enormous 97Whr battery, which can be supplemented by another 97Whr battery for a total of nearly 200Whr!
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