Lenovo has been hitting it out of the park of late. Even its smartphone unit, Motorola, appears to have recovered, and in servers and PCs, Lenovo is a real drive to reckon with.
However final week, Lenovo launched a brand new line of ThinkStation workstations co-designed with Aston Martin that expanded its lead in that market. They’re spectacular performers, utilizing as much as two of Intel’s strongest CPUs and as much as 4 of Nvidia’s strongest skilled graphics playing cards. They pull a lot energy that you just’d possible want your desk or dwelling workplace rewired to run the factor.
Let’s speak about a number of the methods Lenovo has discovered to maneuver round its opponents, which has resulted in its gaining share and customarily being ranked as primary in an rising variety of classes. We’ll shut with my Product of the Week, GrammarlyGO, an answer that provides generative AI to its automated enhancing product line.
The Aston Martin Workstation
What prompted this column was a workstation announcement at DreamWorks, which was as soon as the previous HP’s most outstanding reference account. However when Meg Whitman break up the corporate, neither HPC nor HP might make blended workstation bids. A big benefit with both system would, or apparently did, trigger DreamWorks to flip to Lenovo as a substitute.
From speaking to DreamWorks, it was possible the servers, not the workstations, that compelled the change. Lenovo’s early recognition of the distinctive efficiency benefit of AMD’s Threadripper platform resulted in Lenovo taking on market management of high-end servers, which turned out to be one other good transfer by the corporate.
Aston Martin co-designed the workstations Lenovo launched final week. This alone is fascinating. Not as a result of Q, James Bond’s armorer, had a keenness for these automobiles (there’s an fascinating backstory right here), however as a result of, like Porsche and BMW, Aston Martin has develop into a design home that may be contracted to design different issues.
From left: ThinkStation PX, P7, P5 (Picture Credit score: Lenovo)
Like BMW, which HP has used for workstations prior to now, Aston Martin is sweet at mixing clear exterior design with optimized airflow to create a pretty, high-performance, air-cooled workstation platform. Frankly, it had me at Aston Martin workstation as a result of, whereas it’s uncertain I’ll ever be capable of afford the automobile, the workstation is one thing I might purchase.
As famous above, probably the most high-performance configuration has two of Intel’s strongest skilled CPUs and 4 of Nvidia’s strongest skilled GPUs, which, collectively, require a 20-amp devoted circuit to run. So, if you’d like unbelievable ranges of energy, you’ll possible have to drag a 20-amp devoted circuit so you may plug within the factor.
Your electrical invoice enhance might be substantial in the event you depart that workstation working. However for individuals who want final efficiency, to my information, there’s nothing extra highly effective till an anticipated dual-socket AMD Threadripper providing exhibits up.
Heat Water Cooling
DreamWorks indicated that it switched to Lenovo servers as a result of they may very well be cooled with heat water. This distinctive method, developed at IBM, resulted in extra of 30% power financial savings for DreamWorks’ render farm and gained the corporate a number of environmental awards, in line with DreamWorks.
It nonetheless amazes me that heat water cooling is exclusive to Lenovo, given its large efficiency and price benefits. With heat water cooling, you don’t want a water chiller, making it far cheaper to place in, and also you don’t get condensate, which might create corrosion points.
Over time, Lenovo has developed higher and quicker water connections, pivoting connections that permit for simple upkeep. The ensuing servers run rather more quietly and make the server room extra tech-friendly than is normally the case.
Whereas it nonetheless has some air-cooled elements like energy provides, the plan is to make them water-cooled, finally promising an almost dead-quiet server room. Should you’ve by no means been in a single, a typical server room appears like you might be inside a windstorm or vacuum cleaner. They are usually excessively noisy, making them undesirable locations to work.
The rack-optimized ThinkStation PX offers flexibility to be used in each desktop and information heart environments, enabling a handy transition between the 2. (Picture Credit score: Lenovo)
It’s fascinating to notice that Lenovo showcased each what DreamWorks was utilizing — a four-socket Intel server — and what the subsequent technology was more likely to appear to be — two AMD sockets and as much as 4 GPU accelerators. They’ll have points, provided that GPUs are delivered as socketed components. This final suggests there is a chance for AMD or another graphics vendor (Intel?) to make a socketed GPU answer that would end in some fascinating market share modifications and efficiency enhancements.
For now, we’ll name this a missed alternative.
Generative AI
At Nvidia’s huge GTC convention subsequent week, there might be quite a lot of generative AI content material. DreamWorks indicated that it’s slowly ramping up its generative AI capabilities, which these new Lenovo workstations and servers ought to improve.
I count on this might be a sport changer for film creation as these more and more succesful AIs introduce physics and higher permit animators to create and transfer characters in a film in actual time, with game-like capabilities that mechanically trigger clothes, hair, and scene components to maneuver as in the event that they had been in the true world.
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When carried out, I wager this know-how will massively enhance DreamWorks’ productiveness and permit it to rent extra animators who aren’t good at drawing however have robust particular expertise to create extra balanced and fascinating imagery with the assistance of those generative AI instruments.
In brief, DreamWorks’ future, because of suppliers like Lenovo, seems to be surprisingly vivid!
Wrapping Up
Lenovo is exhibiting great energy in each phase it’s in. Final week, it made a powerful exhibiting with its Aston Martin-designed workstations and warm-water-cooled servers. Lenovo showcased a few of this at DreamWorks, a performance-oriented firm, which backed up Lenovo’s claims concerning market-leading effectivity, value, and efficiency, offering quite a lot of credibility to these claims.
Frankly, I assumed that having James Bond’s automobile firm design a brand new line of servers, which Aston Martin makes use of for its automobile designs, was a powerful solution to argue that Lenovo has not solely the most effective values in these segments but additionally probably the most highly effective and environment friendly options.
Now, if I might simply get them to mortgage me an Aston Martin SUV, ideally the DBX, which was on the occasion, I’d be good.
GrammarlyGO — Generative AI for the Remainder of Us
Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is all the fashion now, however these instruments usually don’t combine nicely along with your workflow, and Microsoft has but to speak about the way it will implement generative AI in Workplace.
Final week, Grammarly introduced its upcoming gen-AI implementation known as GrammarlyGO — which ought to combine with any platform that Grammarly helps, together with a number of browsers, Phrase, and Outlook.
Utilizing easy-to-understand prompts, you may set the tone of a chunk, set the topic, and word inner components.
GrammarlyGO will write an article or column for you, enable you to work by means of author’s block, or create full emails from a few brief sentences. I count on Steve Ballmer would have cherished this final half, as he tended to deal with e-mail responses as if each phrase he wrote put his life in peril.
Present Grammarly clients will acquire entry to this functionality in beta type beginning in April, with the ultimate possible popping out later within the 12 months. Utilizing the mixed Grammarly toolset ought to enhance each the standard and amount of your writing and assist you to do much more in far much less time.
On condition that this can considerably influence my productiveness, GrammarlyGO is my Product of the Week.