TIBURON, CA—April 6, 2005—The workstation continues
to adapt to a changing marketplace, but remains a critical and viable
platform serving the demands of today’s professional users,” was the
word from Jon Peddie Research, which today announced the release of
the third edition of the JPR Workstation Report. “Competition remains
fierce, pressuring the ability of vendors to keep prices down and product
refreshes up.”
Jon Peddie Research reports that roughly 1.7 billion workstations were
shipped in 2004, accounting for approximately $4.5 billion (USD) in
worldwide revenue. Of that, the PC-Derived Workstation, a machine that
leverages technologies derived from the high-volume PC platform, accounted
for roughly 92% of units and 88% of revenue, while the share of Traditional
Proprietary (RISC/Unix) Workstations continued to shrink.
Make or Break Time for AMD
2004 was the year AMD won respect and mindshare as a real threat to
Intel’s stranglehold on workstations. “The next two years will
be make or break for AMD in workstations. It has the OEMs, it will finally
have 64-bit Windows, and it offers architectural advantages for many
memory- and compute-intensive professional applications,” said author
and JPR analyst Alex Herrera. “But Intel is aggressively closing
the gap, so if AMD is to take share, now is the time.”
Linux Appeal Limited
Surprisingly, Linux has not put a big dent in Windows market share
among professional workstation users. Lines today are drawn along 32-
and 64-bit boundaries, with Windows dominating 32-bit applications and
Linux drawing on the base that had been tied to proprietary 64-bit Unix.
As such, Linux has done more to accelerate the transition away from
Traditional Proprietary Workstations than draw users from Windows. In
2005, Windows will finally be able to serve 64-bit applications and
may even begin to put pressure on Linux, rather than the other way around.
Aggressive Graphics Battle
On the professional graphics front, Nvidia and ATI continue to duke
it out for leadership position. Where ATI currently holds the edge in
the consumer and corporate markets, Nvidia has developed a dominant
position in the professional space through its Quadro brand. But ATI
did anything but back off from the professional market in 2004, advancing
its market share in 3D hardware while also introducing its own professional
2D brand to compete directly with Nvidia.