Workstation

A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. ... Workstations offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers, especially with respect to CPU and graphics, memory capacity, and multitasking capability. Workstations were optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulation (e.g. computational fluid dynamics), animation and rendering of images, and mathematical plots. Typically, the form factor is that of a desktop computer, consist of a high resolution display, a keyboard and a mouse at a minimum, but also offer multiple displays, graphics tablets, 3D mice (devices for manipulating 3D objects and navigating scenes), etc. Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories and collaboration tools. ... workstations now use highly commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as Dell and HP, selling Microsoft Windows or GNU/Linux systems running on x86-64 architecture such as Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron CPUs. [Workstation. Wikipedia]