The workstation market is one of the most important, least volatile, and highest perfor- mance-demanding segments of the computer industry. It doesn't grow fast, and in terms of units, it's about as large as that of enthusiast gaming machines. However, in terms of revenue, it's almost an order of magnitude greater. Although workstations, mainstream PCs, and laptops share the same basic design, workstations have a distinct ecosystem with special requirements. The market is enabled by semiconductors from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. Those parts find their way to specialized motherboard and add-in board (AIB) builders, which incorporate high-end memory, disc drives or flash memory, heavy-duty power supplies, and so forth. Some of those products get sold to independent system builders, big OEMs like Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, and Lenovo, and also to users who build their own workstations in exactly the configuration they want.
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