HP Unveils Two Workstations For Digital Content Pros

Hewlett-Packard on Monday introduced two workstations powered by multiple quad-core processors targeted at digital content professionals.

HP presented the xw8600 and xw9400 workstations at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas. The xw8600 includes up to two Intel Xeon X5482 processors, which have a 1,600-MHz front side bus and 800-MHz memory. The xw9400 offers up to three quad-core Opteron 2300 processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Both machines are targeted at professionals in film/video post-production, animation, and the graphics arts industries.

Both machines comply with the highest environmental standards defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers through the organization's Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool. HP workstation customers in the entertainment industry include animation company DreamWorks and A&E Television Networks.

Separately, HP announced that it plans to support Citrix XenDesktop virtualization technology across its HP ProLiant server and HP Compaq thin-client product lines. The XenDesktop-supported products are set to ship next month.

HP is offering ProLiant servers and Compaq thin clients with the XenDesktop virtualization technology preinstalled. XenDesktop makes it possible for many end users to share services of virtualized applications running on the server. An end user may work from an individualized virtual machine in the data center or be linked to a blade server geared to function as if it were the user's personal desktop. HP offers the Business Service Automation product, which is software that can provision, patch, and inventory client systems running XenDesktop.