Worldwide Regional HPC Server Market Forecast, 2017–2022

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.

Hyperion Research has been following the rise of Arm processors in HPC for the past few years, tracking the development of processors as well as the evolution of the HPC software ecosystem to take advantage of Arm. Arm recently came into the spotlight with the acceptance of the Fugaku machine at Riken, which claimed the top spot on the Top500. Based on Fujitsu's Arm-based A64fx processor, Fugaku is a powerful and effective HPC system, rising to the top of many major HPC and AI benchmarks. Hyperion Research believes that the Fugaku machine is part of a wider growth of Arm adoption in HPC.