Worldwide on Premises HPC Broader Market Forecast Update, 2020-2025

Hyperion Research has been tracking the HPC server market for more than two decades, including systems dedicated to compute-intensive application-focused servers and data-intensive application-focused servers. Within the data-intensive segment, AI-focused systems are poised to overtake traditional data-science focused systems by 2026, growing at a five-year CAGR of 22.7%, reaching $6.5 billion USD. Overall, the data-focused server market is anticipated to reach one-third of the entire HPC server market by 2026 (less than 25% of HPC server market in 2021). The full HPC-based AI forecast is explored in this report.

The cloud market for HPC has undergone a fundamental shift in the past two years. Historically, user sites treated cloud resources primarily as additional to on-premises HPC systems to address peaks in workload demand. Generally, funds for HPC cloud resources were separate from the HPC system budgets and were not commonly critical components in future system procurement planning. Over the past two years, that paradigm has changed dramatically. Hyperion Research has conducted a number of studies that suggest cloud is becoming a major component in future resource planning for many HPC user sites. Many sites are now weighing cloud next to on-premises procurement strategies and altering the size and timing of future on-premises deployments to increase their budget for cloud resources.