Can somebody provide an example why would someone prefer such a workstation over a Windows workstation back then? I.e., which specific programs/applications demanded it?
Can somebody provide an example why would someone prefer such a workstation over a Windows workstation back then? I.e., which specific programs/applications demanded it?
One of the main reasons the AIX workstation machines continued to be used even after the Windows NT workstation era began was the CAD software CATIA V4 from Dassault Systèmes.
CATIA V5 was the first version to support Windows NT. However, it was a complete rewrite, resulting in a very different UI and workflows. Even the file formats were largely incompatible with V4, so the automotive industry and their suppliers stayed with CATIA V4 for many years after the release of V5. And the only way to run CATIA V4 was on a UNIX workstation.
Silicon Graphics was still viable in 2006, mostly used for engineering (and maybe video production) graphics. Sun and IBM also competed in this space. SGI went bust in 2009 due to competitive pressures from Windows/x86 workstations. 2006 was probably the last hurrah for this type of workstation.
It's in the article. CAD workstations (Katia etc).
Also AIX was a safer and better certified system back then (think DoD stuff).
It's sprayed all over TFA: CAD
Mind that this was early Windows XP era. The Windows "workstation" would probably have something like a RIVA TNT with 16MB of graphics memory. Meanwhile the Intellistation had way more powerful options (e.g. 128MB on a single card, or exotic 4 cards x 16MB configurations).
But even if you could beef your PC hardware to similar specs, the CAD software was probably just not there (yet). Not to mention that pre-SP2 Windows XP were pretty terrible on their own.
nVidia had Quadro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro Generally the same GPUs, but with different memory configurations and firmwares.
The ATi equivalent was FireGL.
A TNT was from the late 90s. In 2006 512MB consumer GPUs were common.
From the link:
> At that point Windows XP 32-bit was the most commonly used variant, and while you could run XP 64-bit (and IBM did have native support for it on the IntelliStation 9228), XP 64-bit had so many problems so most users were stuck with 3.9 GB of RAM. Therefore if we were to assume that UNIX and said UNIX hardware offered way more memory, it starts to make sense
> why would someone prefer such a workstation over a Windows workstation back then?
Windows was slow, with limited memory, a crappy scheduler and almost no professional SW written for it. Its security was also (until Win XP) nonexistent.