A work station generally indicates a Ordinateur powerful at the disposal of a user and connected to a network.

The term has mainly known success in the middle of the Eighties with the arrival of computers which represented about the maximum of capacity data-processing that one could place at the disposal of a single user.

These computers were appreciably more powerful than PC available to this moment, often comprised a screen much more comfortable (of 17 or 19 inches and high-resolution, generally in black and white; sometimes color, as well as a connection network regarded as powerful at the time (10 mb/s).

Certain companies are truly made up while meeting the needs for this particular market. For example:

• Apollo (repurchased since by HP)
• Sun Microsystems
• Silicon Graphics become today SGI after the repurchase of CRAY.

IBM made an conspicuous entry on the market, although late, with its powerful stations RS/6000 (January 15th 1990).

With the regular increase in the computing power, graphics cards and capacities of PC of high-end, the distinction gradually grew blurred. A work station is not today (2004) more but one UNIX machine which turns on a platform of architecture other than INTEL-AMD , in general provided with a screen of big size 21" , 23" until 28" and of high-resolution (2048x1536 being the bottom-of-the-range one).

The natural users of the work stations were and remain power users (“users of power”) which has important requirements in term for quality of service as the applications of C onception so has by O rdinator in 3D (with engines of returned), or more recently the applications of graphic and video design.

See too

• CAD