2021 Use of Public/External Clouds for HPC Workloads, Trends, and Drivers

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

Hyperion Research projects that between 2021 and 2026, worldwide installations of leading-edge exascale and near-exascale systems will total 28-38 new systems, worth an estimated $10-$15 billion, with China, the EU, and the United States each fielding 7 -10 systems in the six year interval. Being an exascale trailblazer can be expensive, with systems on the near horizon costing upwards of $500 million or more each, and only the most ambitious governments can commit to participating in these early rounds of exascale progress. However, as HPC price/performance moderates, a long-verified phenomenon in the HPC space, additional nations will also be looking to provide their domestic R&D base with access to exascale-class HPCs either developed domestically or procured from foreign sources.