Complexity, Cost, and Uncertainty Represent the Biggest Challenges in AI Inferencing for HPC

According to a recent Hyperion Research study of 135 US quantum computing (QC) technology developers across the academic, commercial, and government sectors, selected financial indicators in the QC commercial sector have yet to settle into any easily characterized profile. For example, Hyperion Research estimates that while more than one third of the reporting QC suppliers in the survey had revenues of five million dollars or more in 2019, almost half that supplied revenue figures had revenues of less than $500 thousand or no sales in 2019. Likewise, survey respondents indicated that the appropriateness of QC R&D funding differ greatly across the corporate, government, and VC spaces, citing a need for more government funding while expressing concern that current VC funding for the sector may be excessive. Finally, when asked about a potential quantum winter, QC suppliers were much more pessimistic than the base of current and potential QC users, with about half of QC suppliers believing a quantum winter is somewhat or highly likely in the next decade, twice that of counterpart QC end users.

Hyperion Research's continuing efforts in Return on Investment (ROI) research examine individual HPC projects and measure the amounts spent on the HPC resources compared with the projects' financial and innovation returns. This report provides an update on this research, including new ROI and Return on Research (ROR) data and additional analysis. Key findings of this updated research include:

• Updated results continue to indicate substantial returns for investments in HPC: * The data now covers 763 successful HPC projects
• On average $507 dollars in revenue per dollar of HPC invested was generated * On average $47 dollars of profit (or cost savings) per dollar of HPC invested was generated * The average HPC investment per innovation was $2.6 million