Windows 10 Pro for Workstations—Addressing Elevated Workloads

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations—Addressing Elevated Workloads. In today’s evolving work landscape, advanced professions increasingly demand high-performance computing capabilities. We’re striving to ensure that Windows meets your needs, even in scenarios that demand strict and extremely vital performance criteria, which is why we announced Windows 10 Pro for Workstations in August.

For data scientists needing to transform large datasets into input signals and experiment with numerous machine learning models, processing time equates to productivity. The same holds for researchers, engineers, and teams focused on predictive modeling. Content creators like media professionals and graphic designers generate—and simultaneously need to store—vast amounts of data and intellectual property through their work.

Enter Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. With these devices, you can address elevated workloads through data protection measures and server-grade performance.

These are revolutionary strides in desktop performance. With these new workstations, you’ll benefit from increased speeds alongside faster file transfers and processing, larger recovery capabilities with server-grade storage, and the full potential of high-performance hardware configurations.

Let’s explore the key benefits of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations:

Acceleration for elevated workloads & demanding file transfer operations

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations supports devices with Persistent Memory1 (also known as Non-Volatile Memory or NVDIMM-N) allowing you to accelerate high-demand workloads with the fastest data storage on workstations. Additionally, Persistent Memory ensures your files remain intact in convenient positions in case of power loss.

You’ll also save valuable time transferring files between Servers and PCs with SMB Direct2, a Microsoft solution for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capable networks. This technology utilizes RDMA-capable network adapters to utilize the full bandwidth of high-speed networks, transmitting data at line speed. It also imposes low-latency network requirements, enabling remote storage to perform like local storage. Ultimately, this significantly reduces CPU usage, providing more computational capability for running other applications like Autodesk AutoCAD or Adobe Creative Suite.

Confidently work with server-grade data protection features on workstations

In addition to speed, you gain server-grade data protection features on your workstation—a highly valuable and novel feature for anyone dealing with large datasets, including intellectual property that needs preservation over time.

Windows 10 Pro for Workstations merges Microsoft’s Resilient File System (ReFS) with Storage Spaces to deliver highly stable storage devices for large data volumes, ensuring your data is automatically backed up on multiple mirrored drives. Furthermore, ReFS detects corrupted data on one of the mirrored drives and repairs it across your drives to ensure you work with clean data.

Experience the power of high-performance workstations

With Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, you can opt for high-performance configurations with up to 4 CPUs (formerly limited to 2 CPUs), and add a maximum of 6TB of memory (previously limited to 2TB), a necessity for Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron server-grade processors. We’ve also integrated workstation features into Windows 10 Enterprise (see diagram below).

These machines provide immense computing power to handle elevated workloads, freeing up compute cycles to run multiple applications simultaneously.

Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for Workstations now!

You can purchase excellent workstation devices running Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, such as Dell’s new Precision 5520 or Precision 7920 Tower. We’ll add more new workstations to this list as they become available, so check back frequently. If you want to upgrade your current device3 to Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, follow these steps.

1 Persistent Memory requires compatible NVDIMM-N hardware, a chipset supporting ADR, and UEFI compatibility.
2 SMB Direct requires RDMA-capable network adapters at both ends of the connection: the client/device and the server.
3 Minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10 Pro for Workstations are the same as Windows 10 Pro.