Although many vendor-reported figures for the fourth quarter aren’t available yet, high performance computing (HPC) market analyst firm Hyperion Research said “it’s clear 2021 will be an exceptionally strong growth year for the worldwide HPC market,” according to CEO Earl Joseph.
Based on 2021 growth over the prior-year quarters of 13.3 percent (first quarter), 23.9 percent (second quarter) and 18.6 percent (third quarter), the company projects full-year 2021 revenue for on-premises HPC server systems will grow at least 12 percent to reach over $15 billion in HPC server revenues. Growth in this, plus related segments that include software, storage and technical support services, will lift revenue for the overall on-premises HPC market above $31 billion. This compares with overall market revenue of $27.3 billion in 2020.
Adding revenue for cloud-based HPC usage raises the projected 2021 HPC market total to more than $36 billion. Joseph said Hyperion Research forecasts that by 2025, the on-premises HPC market will pass $38 billion and cloud-based HPC usage will be worth nearly $9 billion, elevating the combined on-premises and cloud-based total to about $47 billion.
Earl Joseph
“Exceptional HPC market growth in 2021 was driven by much stronger adoption of HPC in mainstream markets, pre-exascale systems and other high-end supercomputers, along with external storage and cloud use,” Joseph said. “We expect our forecast growth to be uneven quarter to quarter, depending heavily on when pre-exascale and exascale supercomputers are accepted for payment by customers, but increasing demand for HPC in established and in newer areas, especially artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum and edge computing, promises robust growth in this transformational technology market.”
