Workstations are used primarily to perform computationally intensive scientific and engineering tasks. They have also found favour in some complex financial and business applications.

Workstations are optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulations like computational fluid dynamics, animation, medical imaging, image rendering, and mathematical plots.

In general, workstations are primarily used for performing intensive scientific computations, also used for complex financial & business apps and other engineering tasks hence high-end workstations are often used to serve a network of the client computer that makes use of apps and tools to access and manipulate data that are stored in workstations.