Lenovo has announced a major new update to its workstation product line. These new next-generation workstations offer the latest Intel and NVIDIA chip technologies paired with new enclosures co-designed with legendary car maker Aston Martin.
Working with Aston Martin, Lenovo was able to tap their expertise in aerodynamics to manage air flow from front to back through the system chassis over and around various chip components to allow for optimal cooling and, thus, optimal chip performance.
Aston Martin Design — Workstations
Designed from the ground up, the new Lenovo workstations reconsidered what a workstation needs to be in the past-pandemic environment, with maximum flexibility of deployment, stunning levels of new compute power and simplified support and IT management for end users.
Lenovo’s new Aston Martin co-designed next-generation ThinkStation computer workstations. (click image for larger view)
“These new desktop workstations have been meticulously designed with a customer-centric lens in order to meet desired business outcomes and deliver innovative new solutions that our customers can enjoy well into the future as workloads increase in complexity,” said Rob Herman, vice president of Lenovo’s Workstation and Client AI Business Unit. “We partnered closely with Intel®, NVIDIA, and Aston Martin to ensure these new systems offer the best of form and functionality by combining a premium chassis with ultra high-end graphics, memory, and processing power.”
The design collaboration of Lenovo’s new ThinkStation chassis has been an amazing three-year journey.
Lenovo turned to Aston Martin, the renowned high-performance automaker and leader in the ultra-luxury vehicle market. Aston Martin co-designed the new ThinkStation chassis, reflecting the icon Lenovo red design language paired with innovative input only Aston Martin could provide to a computer company.
Working together with Lenovo, Aston Martin collaboratively developed redesigned air baffles and larger 3D hex ventilation openings and paired this innovation with Lenovo’s patented tri-channel air-based cooling system, to allow for unobstructed airflow. The final result: maximum cool air intake and hot air exhaust.
At the front of the machine, the 3D hex grill is directly inspired by Aston Martin’s iconic DBS grand tourer, applying insights from the high-performance automotive industry to the desktop workstation. Additionally, all three new workstations boast an innovative, modular design with front-access drives for easy serviceability and upgrade flexibility. The entire system is easy to access, configure, change, and service.
“The design collaboration of Lenovo’s new ThinkStation chassis has been an amazing three-year journey,” said Cathal Loughnane, director of Aston Martin Partnerships. “As Lenovo workstation customers ourselves, this project was a unique opportunity to craft a high-performance system that we will use to design and develop our high-performance vehicles.”
The end result is an iconic computer chassis that maximizes the performance of CPUs, GPUs, and memory and storage.
Next-Gen CPU and GPU
The three new Lenovo ThinkStation workstations feature the newly released next-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (CPUs). The new CPUs offer up to 120 CPU cores and boast a 53% average performance gain over the prior generation workstation Xeons.
Here is a quick summary breakdown of the three new ThinkStations:
- ThinkStation PX
- Dual 4th-Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors
- 60 CPU cores per chip, 120 max, up to 4.1GHz
- Up to 4 NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPUs (each with 48GB VRAM)
- 2TB ECC DDR5 memory
- 60TB Total storage capacity
- ThinkStation P7
- 4th-Gen Intel Xeon W-3400 processor
- 56 CPU Cores, up to 4.8GHz
- Up to 3 NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPUs (each with 48GB VRAM)
- 1TB ECC DDR5 memory
- 52TB Total storage capacity
- ThinkStation P5
- 4th-Gen Intel Xeon W-2400 processor
- 24 CPU Cores, up to 4.8GHz
- Up to 2 NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPUs (each with 48GB VRAM)
- 512GB ECC DDR5 memory
- 48TB Total storage capacity
Architosh will provide more discreet detail on these systems in an upcoming report, delving into what markets Lenovo is seeing workstation expand, what present markets are best suited for these individual new workstations and in what capacities and configurations.
Industry Enthusiasm & Feedback
From Intel
“We are excited to offer the new lineup of Xeon W processors, built on a breakthrough new compute architecture and packaging with significantly more cores to accelerate performance across the fastest growing workloads that businesses depend on today,” said Roger Chandler, vice president of CCG and general manager, Creator and Workstation Solution team at Intel. “These processors are built to ensure professional innovators, including creators, engineers, and data scientists, have the power and stability needed to create the industry’s latest innovations.”
The new Lenovo ThinkStation PX. (Image: Lenovo)
From Aston Martin
“The design collaboration of Lenovo’s new ThinkStation chassis has been an amazing three-year journey,” said Cathal Loughnane, director of Aston Martin Partnerships. “As Lenovo workstation customers ourselves this project was a unique opportunity to craft a high-performance system that we will use to design and develop our high-performance vehicles.”
From NVIDIA
“NVIDIA offers the world’s most powerful visual computing GPUs for desktop workstations,” said Bob Pette, vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. “These are featured in all three of Lenovo’s new ThinkStation desktop systems, equipping data scientists, engineers and creative professionals with the high-performance technology they need to work with massive datasets, innovate faster, and elevate their AI and compute-intensive workflows of tomorrow.”
From Dreamworks Animation
“Lenovo is constantly pushing the technological boundaries of what’s possible within their workstation portfolio. The exceptional reliability and speed of their ThinkStation P620 and P920 is already advancing our animation technology capabilities – which makes us incredibly excited about their upcoming and innovative release of their latest workstations.” – Bill Ballew, Chief Technology Officer at DreamWorks Animation
From Blackmagic Design
“Lenovo’s ThinkStation PX and P7 featuring the new Intel architecture deliver the power and performance DaVinci Resolve customers require to create the increasingly higher fidelity experiences that audiences have come to naturally expect,” said Dan May, President, Blackmagic Design. “Our Resolve customers will be excited to get their hands on these new workstations and take advantage of the high core count, super fast CPUs, improved bandwidth through PCIe Gen 5 and enhanced DDR5 memory to accelerate the most complex professional editing, visual effects and color grading post-production tasks.”
Availability and Learning More
The three new workstations will be available starting in May 2023. Visit Lenovo’s workstation page here and look for our upcoming detailed reports on each machine.
