Building a Better Workstation Platform: 5 Reasons to Upgrade

Compute-intensive workloads continue to be mission-critical, and they’re getting more diverse. This can complicate the workstation selection process since each unique workload has nuanced performance requirements. It also makes establishing a single, organization-wide performance baseline much harder.

In addition, workload diversity impacts the refresh process, as buyers look for a single workstation platform to support high-profile, high-dollar ISV workloads across the business. The robust requirements of today’s applications leave little room for error, and outdated hardware simply can’t keep up.

Your challenge: meeting new performance demands

This is why AMD continues to push the limits of workstation performance. Achieving meaningful gains has an immediate, outsized impact on how an organization creates and collaborates.

• Architecture and engineering teams need traditional office productivity capabilities plus 3D modeling, as well as rendering and even VR. This is a mix of lightly- and multi-threaded tasks that may require large amounts of memory.
• Design and manufacturing teams are leveraging new processes like generative design while also using 3D modeling and simulation. This is another combination of lightly-threaded design tasks plus multi-threaded processes. Some of these tasks may also be sensitive to memory capacity and bandwidth.
• Media and entertainment teams need more cores for rendering, look development, and post-production work. They also require higher-frequency CPUs that can drive better viewport frame rates for scene interaction and animation valuation.
• Software and sciences teams are seeking more cores to help speed up long compile processes, while data scientists need platform expandability to support large, multi-GPU configurations.

Diverse workloads, each with unique performance requirements, demand more tailored configurations optimized to address specific compute bottlenecks.

It’s not just about counting cores or clock speed. Issues of manageability and security are critical, especially in a modern distributed workforce. These are high-profile, high-dollar workloads where uptime is absolutely essential.

Your opportunity: upgrade your workstation platform

The good news is that, even as expectations ramp up, AMD innovation has enabled a new generation of workstations that can keep up with—and in many cases, outpace—expectations. A workstation deployed in 2021 represents an exponential step forward, even when compared to last-generation devices that are only a few years old.

Moving to AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ isn’t just an incremental upgrade, it’s a new kind of workstation platform. If you’re ready to upgrade, now’s the time.

1 Accelerated single-threaded performance

When comparing single-threaded performance, frequency—or clock speed—is critical. While it’s not a complete measure of the CPU’s capability, higher frequency enables faster processing of tasks that can’t be parallelized like we commonly find with 3D modeling and design tools. This can yield higher frame rates in application viewports and immersive VR. It also drives faster assembly rebuilds for designers yielding a more seamless experience for the end user. As seen in Figure 1, the current AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3945WX is roughly up to 35 percent faster than the competing workstation processor¹.

AMD

2 Multi-threaded performance gains

The new generation of workstation processors also pushes the boundaries on the multi-core hyper-threaded workloads that are so essential to bringing good ideas to life. More cores for tasks like look development, final rendering, VFX simulation, generative design, or toolpath optimization equals more iterations and accelerated time to insight.

Figure 2 shows how the 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX outpaces TWO of the top-end competing processors in the popular V-Ray rendering benchmark.

AMD

²Based on testing by AMD performance labs on June 8, 2020, using the Chaos Group V-Ray benchmark to test the performance of the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX reference system versus two (2) Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processors. Results may vary. CPP-32

3 Robust expandability and customization

Professional software application performance is often influenced by other key workstation components. In addition to faster clock speed, up to 64 cores and 2TB of memory capacity, the current generation of AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors feature 128 PCIe 4 lanes, which enable a variety of advanced configurations to support multiple GPUs, high-speed storage, and other PCIe add-in devices. It all adds up to more ways to create a workstation perfectly suited for your specific applications and workflow.

4 Massive memory bandwidth

Memory requirements scale quickly as workflow tasks increase in size and complexity. Many professional applications are performance-bound by the workstation’s memory in terms of capacity and bandwidth. AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors support up to 2TB of system memory, useful to feed large amounts of information quickly to the CPU for processing when working with extremely large datasets or scene files. Threadripper PRO processors also offer unrivaled memory bandwidth enabled by the platform’s eight memory channels.

5 Advanced security and manageability features

Modern workstations must be modernized for the modern workplace. This means distributed collaboration, centralized/simplified IT management, and tighter-than-ever information security, especially where ultra-valuable intellectual property is being created or leveraged.

AMD PRO technologies let organizations access cutting-edge remote management and security tools that integrate well with other IT investments: all choice, no lock-in.

A step that feels like a leap

A modern workstation platform enables your most talented people to do their best work, when and where your organization needs it most. This results in solving problems faster, bringing products to life quicker, turning speed and efficiency into a continuous competitive edge.

• Faster single- and multi-thread performance, thanks to higher frequency and class-leading core count
• Support for high-bandwidth, high-capacity memory, critical to tackling larger projects and data sets sensitive to memory bandwidth
• Incredible extensibility and flexibility that lets you precisely configure workstations to meet unique workload requirements
• Advanced manageability and security that drives higher uptime and information security while helping to reduce IT costs

Critical workloads deserve AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO

To learn more about how AMD can change how you work, visit our workstation hub to explore and discover how AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO Processors can be leveraged in your industry and workflow.

https://www.amd.com/en/processors/workstation

https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-threadripper-pro

¹ Based on AMD performance lab testing on June 8, 2020, using the Autodesk Revit RFO v3.2 2020 test to compare the performance of AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3945WX reference system vs. Intel Xeon W-3275 processor. Results may vary. CPP-70