Features:

IDC SAYS HPC $6B+ HEALTHY AND GROWING

With the requisite caution expected from a seasoned analyst, IDC's Earl Joseph, Chris Willard and Addison Snell, along with a panel of industry experts from the HPC User Forum, told a room of HPC executives from industry, academia, federal governments and vendors that times are good and should continue for the foreseeable future (Q1, 2005).

In the first half of 2004;

Revenue grew 39% over the same period in 2003, to $3.374 billion (6-month figure). If the second half of 2004 matches the second half of 2003, the market will grow by about $1 billion.

Unit sales were 70,190, up 98.1%.

• Average selling price (ASP) was $40,100, down 29.8%.
• Capability segment growth was 6%,
• Enterprise segment 69.6%,
• Departmental 30.2%,
• Divisional 43.2%.
• The departmental segment represents about half of the overall market.

Observations -

Growth in 2003 was heavily weighted toward the second half, hence high growth rates for the second half of 2004 are unlikely to continue. But if the second half of 2004 simply matches growth for the prior-year second half, the HPC market will have added about $1 billion in revenue during 2004.

During the first quarter of 2003, the market was still in decline. It turned the corner into growth mode in second-quarter 2003.

Clusters are growing very steadily and now represent 30% of the HPC market. Willard showed a chart that helped explain the appeal of commodity components, clusters and grids. The revenue share attributed to clusters has grown steadily every quarter since the beginning of 2003.

Willard also showed a chart illustrating how many CPUs you can get for $1 million and average selling price (ASP).

• CPUs/$1M: x86 (5,114); EPIC (149); RISC (83); vector (7)
• ASP: x86 ($37,000); EPIC ($38,000); RISC ($62,000); vector ($2.5 million)

IDC Studies:

A recently completed study on industrial-sector HPC usage in the U.S. found:

• 29% of current workloads were capability-class problems.
• 97% of respondents said that without HPC they would either be "unable to compete" or "could not exist as a business."
• Lack of availability of people was cited as the #1factor holding back incremental investment in HPC

Another recently completed multi-client study (MCS) on cluster and grid usage found:

• Although "better price/performance" and "lower total cost of ownership (TCO)" were the #1 and #2 cited reasons for cluster implementation, a third of all respondents said they chose to implement clusters because they allowed "new/better/more science" or the "ability to run larger problems."
• Over one-third of respondents either already had grids implements or were planning a significant implementation.
• Approximately two-thirds of respondents said grid computing would have "no significant impact on their spending plans."

Although all segments are showing growth, the strongest growth is coming from the Technical Departmental segment, defined as capacity systems sold for under $250,000. In 2003, the Technical Departmental segment accounted for approximately half of the market's total revenue.

IDC expects continued growth for HPC and is forecasting the total market to reach $7.6 billion in 2008.

Also joining the IDC team on stage were HPC User Forum steering committee members Alex Akkerman (Ford), Steve Finn (DOD HPCMP), Jim Kasdorf (PSC), Paul Muzio (NCSI/AHPCRC), Charles Nietubicz (ARL) Vince Scarafino (Ford) and Suresh Shukla (Boeing).

For full details of the report, email idcreport@hpcwire.com.