Supercomputers the hero for robust HPC market in Q2

Countries still spending on big-ticket rollouts, says IDC

Average selling prices in the high-performance computing (HPC) arena continued to soar in 2012's second quarter as big-ticket projects kept the market in decent shape.

Figures from IDC reveal that the global worth of the HPC market in Q2 was down just 0.9 per cent annually to $2.4bn (£1.5bn), despite shipment volumes plummeting more than 21 per cent to about 23,000.

The supercomputer segment, comprising high-end $500,000-plus systems, was the market's cornerstone in Q2, contributing sales of $1.17bn, some 48.6 per cent of the total. Revenue in this sector rose 21.8 per cent quarter on quarter. In the lower-end workgroup space, sales were down 13.9 per cent sequentially to a little over $250m, equating to 10.6 per cent of the total.

IBM and HP continued to enjoy a closely fought battle for top spot in the vendor league table, holding 32.7 and 29.8 per cent of the market respectively in Q2. Dell remains a comfortable third, with a 14.2 per cent slice of the market.

Further down the rankings Cray and Fujitsu both posted stellar numbers in Q2, growing sales annually by 43.7 and 33.5 per cent respectively.

Earl Joseph, programme vice president for technical computing at IDC, said: "HPC technical servers, especially supercomputers, have been closely linked not only to scientific advances but also to industrial innovation and economic competitiveness.

"For this reason, nations and regions across the world are increasing their investments in supercomputing even in today's challenging economic conditions. We expect the global race for HPC leadership in the petascale-exascale era to continue heating up during this decade."