Lenovo unveils Nehalem-based workstations

Lenovo's new ThinkStations are aimed at demanding applications

Lenovo is the latest vendor to announce systems ahead of Intel's launch of the Nehalem-based Xeon chips for workstations and servers next week.

The firm has announced two new workstations, the ThinkStation S20 and ThinkStation D20, which it said are designed for demanding applications in fields such as computer aided design, digital content creation and oil and gas exploration. Both will be available from April.

Exact details of clock speeds and other specifications have yet to be disclosed, but Lenovo said that the models will feature a choice of the upcoming Xeon processors.

These offer increased efficiency and higher performance with Intel's Turbo Boost technology, which allows processor cores to run faster when required during peak processing loads.

The systems will ship with a choice of Nvidia Quadro or ATI FirePro graphics, with Windows Vista as the standard operating system. However, Lenovo will also support RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.2.

For additional performance in demanding applications, the new ThinkStations will be optionally available with Nvidia's Tesla C1060 GPU platform, a plug-in module with a specialist chip containing 240 processor cores, giving users the power of a desktop supercomputer.

The ThinkStation D20 will be priced from £980, and the ThinkStation S20 from £780.