Forecast Update: GPU and Accelerator Growth in HPC

HPC in the cloud has continued on a strong upward trajectory over the last few years, fueled by a concerted effort from CSPs to address the technical capabilities needed to better run HPC jobs in cloud environments. Many CSPs have bolstered their HPC strengths through hiring HPC experts to speak with HPC customers on application-specific issues, such as porting and running hard HPC jobs in the cloud. Further, CSPs are continuously increasing the platforms offered for HPC with the addition of offerings such as high performance processors, access to bare metal, a variety of accelerator options, high-performance interconnects, multiple storage offerings, as well as software packages valuable to HPC customers. These steps have resulted in dramatic advances in cloud adoption over the past two years, including a major growth year in 2019.

According to a recent Hyperion Research study of 115 current and interested QC end-users from both HPC and enterprise IT organizations, the average budget of surveyed QC buyers/users, worth about $3.2 million in 2019, will grow at a 27% CAGR between 2019 and 2024. This growth includes follow-on budget commitments from existing QC users as well as new budget commitments from a tranche of survey respondents who are currently only considering QC involvement. However, the number of organizations that are not yet certain of budget timetables over the next four years remains relatively constant at about 15% of those surveyed. A strong anticipated growth rate in QC end-user budgets implies high expectations for QC developments that can support adequate return on investment or sector-relevant competitive advantage. Current and potential QC users likely will be looking for QC suppliers to roll out a series of steady technological and use case advances that provide assurance that the QC sector is successfully moving to achieve stability, reducing the risk of being an early adopter.