Lenovo’s new workstation features AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO
Lenovo on Tuesday unveiled the ThinkStation P620, a single-socket workstation platform featuring AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO processor. The AMD CPU makes the ThinkStation P620 the first 64-core workstation on the market. Typically, a single-CPU system offers up to 18 cores while a dual-processor system can support up to 56.
At its launch, slated for September, the ThinkStation P620 will be the only workstation with the Threadripper PRO. The Threadripper PRO processors offer clock speeds up to 4 GHz, 128 lanes of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth and 8-channel memory support. The powerful system, Lenovo said, will serve a range of professionals, from visual artists and game developers to architects and engineers.
"If we look across all the different kinds of industries, the biggest thing we're seeing are projects are getting bigger, they're getting more complex, the amount of data that we actually go through and produce now is so much higher," Lenovo Worldwide Product Manager Jenni Ramsay said to reporters. "So a new solution was needed for that challenge."
Customers have been trying to test out Threadripper processors in their environments, Ramsay said, but they effectively had to build consumer boxes without the support, manageability and security features that come with a workstation.
With AMD's business-centric processor, customers get advanced security features like AMD Secure Processor, which validates code before it is executed, as well as AMD Memory Guard for full memory encryption. The processor also comes with AMD's PRO Manageability feature set, which enable capabilities like remote updates and repairs, as well as AMD Pro Business Ready benefits like 18 months of planned software stability.
Lenovo worked with AMD to build a custom-designed heat sink to accommodate the processor's thermal requirements.
In addition to the powerful CPU, the ThinkStation P620 offers flexible GPU configurations, supporting up to two Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000 or four RTX 4000 graphics cards. It comes with up to 1 TB of memory and 20 TB of storage. It's also the only PCIe Gen 4 workstation available, offering twice the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0.