Editing Workstation (section)

===3M computer===
{{Main|3M computer}}
[[File:NeXTstation Turbo Color 2.jpeg|thumb|A [[NeXTstation]] graphics workstation from 1990]]
[[File:sony news.jpg|thumb|[[Sony NEWS]] workstation: 2× [[68030]] at 25 MHz, 1280×1024 pixel and 256-color display]]
[[File:SGI Indy CRT.jpg|thumb|[[SGI Indy]] graphics workstation]]
[[File:SGI O2 Workstation Desk.jpeg|thumb|[[SGI O2]] graphics workstation]]
[[File:HP-HP9000-C8000-Workstation 33.jpg|thumb|[[Hewlett-Packard|HP]] C8000 workstation running [[HP-UX]] 11i with [[Common Desktop Environment|CDE]]]]
[[File:Six HP workstations.jpg|right|thumb|Six workstations: four HP Z620, one HP Z820, one HP Z420]]
A high-end workstation of the early 1980s with the three Ms, or a "3M computer" (coined by Raj Reddy and his colleagues at CMU), has one megabyte of RAM, a megapixel display (roughly 1000×1000 pixels), and one "[[megaflop|MegaFLOPS]]" compute performance (at least one million floating-point operations per second).<ref>Andries van Dam; David H. Laidlaw; Rosemary Michelle Simpson (2002-08-04). "Experiments in Immersive Virtual Reality for Scientific Visualization". Computers & Graphics. 26 (4): 535–555. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.4.9249. doi:10.1016/S0097-8493(02)00113-9</ref> RFC 782 defines the workstation environment more generally as "hardware and software dedicated to serve a single user", and that it provisions additional shared resources. This is at least one order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of the time. The original 1981 [[IBM Personal Computer]] has 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around {{val|1 |ul=kFLOPS}} ({{val|30 |u=kFLOPS}} with the optional 8087 math coprocessor). Other features beyond the typical personal computer include networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses.

Another goal was to bring the price below one "[[wikt:megapenny|megapenny]]", that is, less than {{US$|long=no|10000|1985|about|round=-3}}, which was achieved in the late 1980s. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many workstations cost from {{US$|15000|long=no}} to {{USD|100000|long=no|1995|round=-3}} or more.