US quantum computing (QC) supplier IonQ recently announced plans to build what it is calling the first US-based QC manufacturing plant. The 65,000 square foot facility, scheduled for completion in the first half of 2024, will be located outside Seattle, Washington and will most likely be targeted for the firm's next-generation 32-qubit Aria quantum computer. The facility is also slated to become IonQ's second internal data center, but there were no announced details whether this new center will either supplant or augment IonQ' s existing cloud service provider relationships with Azure Quantum, Amazon Bracket, and Google Cloud, that currently support access to IonQ systems.

In a signed agreement published in December of 2022, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) called for proposals to fund a €270M effort to develop a European HPC infrastructure built on the RISC-V open ecosystem. The effort also includes fostering an overall open-source RISC-V community, code porting capabilities, and the development of chiplets based on the RISC-V open instruction set architecture (ISA). RISC-V stands apart from other ISAs as an open-standard that is free to license and has no IP requirements. RISC-V currently has a few offerings in the base product but has clear potential in meeting flexibility and customizability needs over proprietary chip counterparts.

Data collected in the most recent iteration of the Hyperion Research Global End-User Multi-Client Study indicates a strikingly low usage of AI-specific software licenses across all sectors, especially academia and government. This research revealed that only 3.5% of academic and government respondents, combined, were currently using licensed AI software, while the entire survey group exhibited a usage rate of 13.8%. Respondents representing academic sites were the least likely to answer positively in paying for AI software licenses, with a rate of 1.9%, and industry were the most likely at 21.1%. This data indicates an overwhelming preference for open source and in-house solutions for AI software, including training analytics and library interface tools, over proprietary AI[1]specific software offerings currently on the market.

According to a recent survey of over 200 HPC sites worldwide, the on-premises and cloud HPC markets are expected to grow over the next five years, although at slightly lower rates than previously anticipated earlier in 2022. Future cloud budgets for HPC workloads are expected to grow at a faster rate than the on-premises market for industry and academic user sites, while government sites are anticipating higher on-premises budget growth.

The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) recently announced the selection of six sites to host what could be the first major round of EU government-sponsored quantum computer (QC) procurements. The new QC systems will be integrated into leading EU-based HPC sites including the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre in Czechia, the Barcelona Supercomputer Center in Spain, and Cineca in Italy, as well as key HPC sites in France, Germany, and Poland. The QC systems will be networked to support EU-wide access by academic, commercial and government research facilities. Half of the 2023 €100 million procurement budget will come from the EU and the remainder from the 17 countries participating in the EuroHPC JU. The QC hardware and software for this effort will draw exclusively on EU technology developed under EU-funded quantum initiatives, related national programs, and private investments.

Due to a shift in HPC sites' perception of HPC cloud resources available and in future roadmaps from CSPs, the HPC cloud market continues to be one of the strongest growth markets in today's HPC ecosystem. While the HPC on-premises market is not projected to dramatically change from the steady 6%-8% five-year CAGR seen in years past, the cloud market is currently showing a projected 17.6% five-year CAGR for the next five years.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Microsoft have entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), formalizing NOAA's commitment to using Microsoft Azure cloud computing resources in the pursuit of NOAA's mission to build a Climate[1]Ready Nation by 2030. Several initiatives are envisioned whereby NOAA scientists and engineers will work with Microsoft experts to leverage Azure's machine learning and HPC capabilities: ▪ Fast-tracking innovative contributions to NOAA Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) earth systems modeling and research ▪ Applying machine learning capabilities to improve models supporting air quality, smoke, and particulate pollution forecasts, as well as relevant NOAA climate models ▪ Accelerating NOAA Fisheries' survey and observations data collection and management ▪ Creating new ocean observations cataloging efforts ▪ Designing resilient and accessible weather modeling and forecasting that can incorporate external data sources with NOAA enterprise data

During the recent Wells Fargo 2022 TMT Summit, Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD, reported that the Instinct MI300 accelerated processing unit (APU) is, as of early December 2022, up and running. Currently confined to their in-house lab, the Instinct MI300 will be used in the exascale supercomputer currently in development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, El Capitan, scheduled to be delivered in 2024. Described by Papermaster as a "true datacenter APU," AMD expects general availability of the processor in 2023. This multi-chiplet processor makes use of both AMD's Zen 4 (x86) CPU architecture and CDNA 3, AMD's GPU architecture, designed specifically with exascale computing in mind, and will be produced by Taiwan's TSCM at the 5nm process node. Papermaster sees this development as an important way to continue introducing greater density and optimization into components now that the sector is no longer in the era of the "old Moore's Law."

During the recent SC22 event in Dallas, Texas, RISC-V Foundation Chairman Professor Krste Asanović from the EECS Department at UC, Berkeley gave a presentation detailing the technological and market position of RISC-V and its potential to become a leading ISA, supplanting the slate of proprietary ISAs that currently dominate the sector. According to Asanović, it is only a matter of time before the RISC-V instruction set architecture claims its rightful place in the HPC stack among other industry standards like Ethernet, Posix, or SQL.

With over 11,000 on-site attendees approaching pre-pandemic levels, and only 700 virtual participants, SC22 in Dallas, TX far exceeded the high expectations of the broad HPC community. There was no shortage of avenues for participants to obtain the latest knowledge relative to market developments and technology innovations occurring across the industry. The Hyperion Research team of analysts has compiled its primary takeaways and perspectives from the event.

IBM recently announced that it is combining the Red Hat storage and associated teams with the IBM Storage business unit. The combination aims to bring consistent data storage solutions across on-premises and cloud infrastructures to deliver a unified storage experience regardless of file type.

In mid-June of 2022, Cerebras Systems announced a new feature that allows users to train some of the largest AI models in the world within a single CS-2 machine using a simplified software support scheme. The announcement highlights multiple capabilities that Cerebras sees as their competitive advantages over other companies. Notable examples cited include the ability to accommodate an entire training model within the memory, through Cerebras' Weight Streaming software on the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE), instead of splitting it across processors, as well as the ability for users to manipulate a few inputs within the software scheme and GUI to choose the scale of model desired for training (i.e., GPT-3 13B, GPT-3XL 1.3B). Cerebras claims that this advancement can cut down the setup of large model training runs from months to minutes, with the Cerebras software managing much of the initial setup.

Catalog and Seagate Technology recently announced a collaboration to advance DNA-based technology towards becoming commercially viable storage and computing solution. Catalog brings their molecule designs for storing data in DNA and performing computation across a library of molecules to the partnership, while Seagate Technology will be contributing its silicon-based lab-on-a[1]chip technology to reduce the volume of chemistry required for DNA-based storage and computation.

The development of AI and HPC hardware is currently undergoing a fundamental shift, with many countries recognizing the negative ramifications that can occur when supply chains and technology dependence is based on international relations. A growing urgency for indigenously developed technology has become a staple in many ten-year technology roadmaps worldwide. At the recent Hot Chips 34 conference, Chinese firm Biren Technology announced a new GPU product line, the BR100, one of the first such devices developed in China and targeted for widespread HPC and AI markets. The Chinese advanced computing sector has been an increasingly sensitive geopolitical and economic topic over the past decade, with some domestic IT system suppliers experiencing heavy restrictions from the United States government on access to advanced computing technology from US sources. The announcement of the Biren GPU is a step toward China improving their indigenous HPC and AI capabilities from a hardware perspective, a progressive move targeted to reduce China's dependence on US-based providers including AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA.

During an inaugural ministerial meeting of the U.S.-Japan Economic Policy Consultative Committee (EPCC) in July, a joint statement was presented detailing a renewed and explicit commitment to regional economic stability, fairness, and hardiness. The statement, which includes an action plan, enumerates four main goals: realizing peace and prosperity through rules-based economic order, countering economic coercion and unfair opaque lending practices, promoting and securing critical and emerging technologies and critical infrastructure, and strengthening supply chain resilience. While renewed and steady efforts to maintain regional welfare are an end within themselves, this joint statement takes on an additional layer of complexity and purpose when considered in light of the recent U.S. CHIPS Act, a semiconductor promotion policy whose U.S.-only tone has the potential to cause regional turbulence and heighten international trade tensions.

Hyperion Research recently conducted a survey of quantum computing (QC) experts worldwide to better understand some of the key QC architectural issues facing the global QC research community in the next two to three years. Although not a large enough survey to draw finely tuned conclusions, the survey does help scope a number of important issues facing the QC development community in the near future.

Two recent announcements highlight a growing trend towards partnership and innovation aimed at space-based technical computing and storage infrastructure. The former seeks a 100X increase in computational power via a High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor, and the latter is exploring appropriate storage media for low-earth orbit satellite focal planes and RF sensor data.

A recent United Kingdom policy paper entitled Establishing a pro-innovation approach to regulating AI identifies unique AI-related regulatory challenges, outlines six cross-sectoral potential solutions, and provides a future outlook on bringing these recommendations to reality. The document contributes to the increasingly unique and regionally divergent approach to AI regulation the UK is adopting as part of the greater framework seen in the UK national AI strategy plan published in September 2021. This latest publication, presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, prominently espouses innovation-forward policy making, while acknowledging and addressing the inherent risks of developing and deploying AI technology. For UK planners, a system of voluntary, regulatory, and quasi-regulatory policies enables greater UK government responsiveness to technological, political, or contextual developments through an evolving cohort of regulatory bodies, all aiding responsible use of AI in respective fields and through different lenses.

The US government recently stood up a consortium of six Washington D.C.-based federal agencies to explore a range of quantum technologies necessary to create, demonstrate, and operate DC-QNet, a regional, multi-kilometer quantum network testbed. The six participating agencies span a range of US government mission agencies including the National Security Agency, the US Naval Research Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The program targets key underlying technologies needed to implement a metro[1]area quantum network that includes high-fidelity quantum memory, single photon devices, and related network metrology as well as mechanisms to support quantum entanglement between network nodes in a quantum computer. Details about project schedule and budget have not yet been made available, but each participating agency will be responsible for funding its research activities.

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.

This Hyperion Research study presents the latest five-year forecast (2021-2026) for HPC on-premises Supercomputer systems by subsegments. Overall, the Supercomputer market segment for HPC systems priced at $500,000 or more is projected to represent nearly half of the server market throughout the forecast, reaching $9.5 billion in 2026. This is heavily driven by the large exascale systems expected to be accepted in 2022 to 2026.

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 studies have revealed that hiring staff with the requisite HPC-related skillsets is becoming the number one roadblock for growth at many HPC sites. Growing the available talent pool for advanced computing and AI-related careers is critical in order to support and drive scientific research and engineering afforded by the powerful innovations occurring in the fields of HPC and AI. EUMaster4HPC, promoted as the first pan-European Master of Science (MSc) program in High Performance Computing (HPC), was created for this purpose. Discussed in-depth at the recent EuroHPC Summit and funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, the MSc program will link academic excellence to the current and future challenges of European businesses, industry, and the public sector in the multidisciplinary field of HPC.

Hyperion Research, at the behest of QED-C®, recently conducted a survey seeking information and insights on the various challenges facing the global QC supply chain. Based on a survey of US quantum computing (QC) commercial entities spanning the QC ecosystem, there are significant concerns that there could be a serious QC-related supply chain disruption in the next few years. Potential choke points are widely dispersed across the supply chain spanning assured access to necessary raw materials to a steady supply of trained software experts. Further complicating this issue is that the QC sector is currently in a nascent and rapidly changing state with a spate of new technologies, hardware and software implementations, and related production and distribution schemes yet to be firmly established.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In March 2022, the 78th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Rebecca Hartman-Baker, the User Engagement Group Lead at NERSC. In addition to providing some background information and updates on the current activities at NERSC, Hartman-Baker explained new developments in checkpointing technology being leveraged as an enabling technology and the center's vision for the future.

This Hyperion Research study presents our updated five-year forecast (2021-2026) for HPC on-premises technical servers. Worldwide revenue for the HPC technical server market in 2021 was $14.7 billion, representing a strong growth (9.1%) over 2020 revenues. Hyperion Research now predicts that the HPC technical server market will grow at a 6.9% CAGR between 2021 and 2026 to reach $20.5 billion in 2026.

The application software landscape is quickly evolving along with HPC workloads. Independent software vendor (ISV) applications, as opposed to open-source or home-grown, have traditionally been considered the gold standard as the source for many HPC applications and were frequently cited as HPC users' top applications. While ISV revenues continue to rise, open-source application use is growing as well. Although HPC users can be reluctant to change the applications used at their site, developments such as the onset of AI, new types of hardware, and the cloud have spurred many users to explore new applications they may not have considered otherwise. Overall, the HPC application software landscape is rapidly developing in tandem with new HPC infrastructure and use cases.

Hyperion Research forecasts that the worldwide HPC broader market (servers, storage, software, and services) will expand at a 6.4% CAGR to exceed $40B in 2026. HPC servers compose about half of the broader market revenues and are expected to grow at a similar rate (6.9% CAGR) to exceed $20B in 2026. Storage is forecasted to show the highest growth (8.7% CAGR).

Seeking to establish a die-to-die interconnect standard and foster an open chiplet ecosystem, a strong collection of major chip makers and users recently announced the formation of the UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) industry consortium. The consortium has published version 1.0 of the UCIe specification, covering the die-to-die I/O physical layer, die-to-die protocols, and software stack. Promoter members of the consortium are Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (ASE), AMD, Arm, Google Cloud, Intel Corporation, Meta, Microsoft Corporation, Qualcomm Incorporated, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)

Researchers at the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) recently reported a new approach to error mitigation in a quantum computer (QC) that targets error-producing noise, a ubiquitous problem that can severely limit the performance and utility of existing and near-future quantum computers. The method developed at LBNL consists of taking an initial noisy target circuit and constructing an analogous estimation circuit that is configured specifically for accurate noise characterization. The information gathered from running the estimation circuit is then applied to correct the noise in the original target circuit.

The Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) recently announced a $62 million USD collaborative effort to establish a domestic quantum computing (QC) infrastructure. The two-pronged approach calls for the Israel Innovation Authority, part of Israel's Ministry of Economy charged with fostering domestic industrial R&D, to focus on developing QC algorithms, applications, and a related software stack to support both on-premises or cloud QC access models. For its part, the IMOD will stand up a national center to develop a complete quantum computer including a quantum processor expected to consist of 30-40 qubits, quantum control capabilities, and I/O interfacing hardware.

At the conclusion of 2021, researchers at UNC Charlotte and Duke University Medical Center published results of work done to use transfer learning methods to generate fluence maps for radiation therapy, aimed at providing medical professionals with more capability and information in fighting adrenal cancers. The technique uses a deep transfer learning model trained on a much larger dataset that can be applied to a smaller data set for a specific application.

• The initial model was trained on pancreas treatment plans, then retuned and applied to a smaller set of data points on adrenal cancers. The output of the model generates a fluence map for specific IMRT beam-based treatments for adrenal cancers.
• According to the researchers, this approach is meant to supplement but not replace human expertise in the field and is reliant on human expertise to finetune and improve the AI model.

On February 8, 2022, the European Commission formally proposed what's commonly referred to as the European Chips Act. The legislation plans to build on Europe's strengths and address weaknesses to develop a thriving domestic semiconductor ecosystem and resilient supply chain, while setting measures to anticipate and respond to future supply chain disruptions. In the short term, the Act seeks to bolster EU capabilities to anticipate future chips crises, strengthen manufacturing activities in the EU, and support scale-up and innovation across the whole value chain. In the mid- to long-term, it seeks to reinforce Europe's technological leadership while developing mechanisms to support transfer of knowledge from the lab to the fab and position Europe as a technology leader in innovative downstream markets.

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.

At the recent CES 2022 tech event, Japanese corporation OMRON, the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of personal heart health products and other medical devices, highlighted (and later announced on their website) the activities of their partnership with Kyoto University to develop an AI[1]powered platform that uses remotely gathered patient data to predict cardiovascular diseases at an earlier stage than current averages. Kyoto University is closely tied to the identity of Japan's government and considered Japan's leading research university. They operate a Top500 HPC system on-site in addition to conducting research on the cutting edge Fugaku supercomputer. This new program, part of an ongoing partnership between the two organizations, seeks to explore the use of AI to analyze blood pressure metrics for early detection of cardiovascular diseases faster and with greater accuracy allowing for treatment courses to be changed or taken more quickly.

HPC has long been recognized as indispensable for advancing scientific research, providing more timely and accurate weather forecasting, building better products, and enabling broader adoption of technical computing for AI-driven training and inference. At the same time, HPC has also been recognized as being extremely complex to set up, operate, and maintain. According to recent Hyperion Research studies, over half of the overall HPC market identified the lack of staffing and ease-of-use related issues as barriers for them to acquire additional HPC-based solutions. NVIDIA, a leading HPC hardware component supplier, has announced that it is addressing this issue by acquiring Bright Computing, a leader in software for managing high-performance computing systems used by more than 700 organizations worldwide.

Results from the most recent Hyperion Research Multi-Client Study (MCS) show continued evolution within HPC file system adoption. The 2021 HPC Multi-Client Study: Trends and Forecasts in HPC Storage and Interconnects report details the storage and interconnect-related responses and analysis associated with the 252 HPC storage systems deployed at 141 global HPC respondent sites representing 2,006 HPC systems. The survey sample had a total of 338 file systems. This Special Study examines file system utilization.

Open source and standards have long been a hallmark of the HPC community. Each encourages broad industry participation, wide-ranging collaboration, and a thriving ecosystem with a common goal of robust, interoperable solutions. Key to the success of standards and open source is a stable, neutral governance and support structure. Two new unrelated industry efforts (Apptainer evolving under the auspices of the Open Linux Foundation and DMTCP establishing a public/private open-source partnership) have been embraced by the HPC community to strengthen the standards and open source activities of the HPC ecosystem.

In an announcement made in December, 2021, Verusen, a startup specializing in leveraging AI resources to support global supply chains, detailed a recently formed partnership with Machine Compare, a supplier of one of the world's largest databases for machinery and leading B2B marketplace for buyers and sellers of industrial spare parts. The partnership is aimed at enhancing the customer experience, limiting risk, reducing waste, and helping companies conduct materials management and commerce in a new and efficient way. Verusen founder and CEO Paul Noble explains the partnership is targeted to resolve a painful and wasteful process and will ultimately allow manufacturers to realize a whole new level of sustainability. For his part, Machine Compare CEO Ben Findlay is looking for a reduction in downtime, stockouts, and costs. Furthermore, the burdens lifted by the Verusen AI capabilities are targeted to reduce the amount of manpower committed to time-consuming, reactive tasks, allowing for a more proactive and long-term management of goals.

Storage and interconnects continue to be important elements of HPC system architecture and are expected to take on even greater significance with increasing demanding and diverse requirements driven by both traditional compute-intensive HPC mod/sim workloads and data-intensive AI workloads. The significance is reflected in recent market data and near-term forecasts, technology adoption and utilization trends, industry announcements in the second half of 2021, and future storage and related technology research direction of Hyperion Research.

The US Office of Science and Technology Policy recently released its second annual National Quantum Initiative (NQI) report, a supplement to the President's FY22 Budget Request that outlines the major US government quantum information science (QIS) research activities and related funding levels out to FY 2022. As seen in Figure 1, the proposed FY2022 budget, which is targeted for about $880 million, calls for an increase of nearly 11% from the previous year. Roughly half of the funding is to come from the NQI and the other half from base agency-specific QIS R&D budgets. The figure represents the sum of Federal budgets for U.S. QIS R&D efforts in over a dozen agencies including NIST, NSF, DOE, NASA, DOD, and DHS, and it also aggregates several QIS subtopics such as computing, networking, sensing, fundamental science, and end quantum-related use cases

Hyperion Research recently released its updated annual 5-year forecast for the on-premises technical server market, also referred to as the HPC server market, Worldwide On-premises HPC Broader Market Forecast Updates, 2020-2025. While projecting a steady overall 8% CAGR over the 5-year period, the forecast includes a drop in projected on-premises technical server revenues between 2024 and 2025. Although not a common occurrence, there is precedence for such a pullback in the sector, and in this particular instance a confluence of three trends is contributing to this phenomenon.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In September 2021, the 77th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Leonardo Flores Añover, Senior Expert at the HPC & Quantum Technology Unit at the European Commission. He provided insights and updates on the current and future developments of HPC in the European Union and the EuroHPC joint undertaking as well as insights into their new HPC policy environment, the state of play in the EU, and drivers of the Union's HPC strategy.

Understanding the HPC market by application segment continues to be essential as many key behaviors, such as spending habits and emerging technology adoption, are closely related to specific application areas. Verticals, applications, software, and middleware are all inextricably linked and key to accurately characterizing HPC site workloads. Important developments in these areas are explored in the 2021 iteration of Hyperion Research's annual HPC Multi-Client Study: Vertical/Application Workload Areas and Technical Computing System Software and Middleware report. Key findings from the report are summarized in this document.

Users continue to run an increasing amount of their HPC workloads in the cloud. Recent Hyperion Research studies show that while heretofore the HPC cloud spending was largely complementary and incremental to on-premises HPC spending, there is growing evidence that on-premises spending is being either delayed or foregone altogether in lieu of cloud spending. Insights into the critical factors driving the trend are detailed in the 2021 iteration of Hyperion Research's annual MCS end user study, Use of Public/External Clouds for HPC Workloads, Trends, and Drivers report. Key Findings from the report are summarized in this document.

As AI and Big Data/HPDA applications continue to grow in importance and focus for HPC data centers and users worldwide, the demand for dedicated HPDA and AI systems are increasing at a rate nearly double that of the overall HPC market. By 2025, Hyperion Research expects roughly one-third of all system revenue to be dedicated to HPDA and AI-centric systems, in a category defined as Data[1]Centric HPC Systems. The portion of the data-centric market focused on AI applications is experiencing even higher growth, nearly 23% CAGR over the five year period, driven by the influx of AI workloads not only for new application spaces but also as a supplemental tool for the traditional simulations that have dominated the HPC space for decades. Some important HPDA workloads require analytics alone, while many benefit from combining established simulation and newer analytics methods, especially machine and deep learning.

AI and HPDA applications continue to grow in utilization and importance in the HPC space, altering the direction of system architecture and design as well as widening the scope of HPC and AI. HPC system architects now have to factor in a variety of processor technologies as well as interconnect, storage, and memory configurations to handle a more diverse set of workloads. Not only are HPC sites adopting emergent AI and HPDA workloads, but some are applying AI techniques to traditional modelling and simulation workloads to uncover new capabilities and solutions. This frequent pairing of simulation and analytics requires that HPC system designs be both compute and data friendly. As a result, recent designs are starting to reverse the emphasis on compute-centrism of past decades and establishing a better balance. Insights into the critical factors driving these and other trends are detailed in the 2021 iteration of Hyperion Research's annual Multi-Client Study (MCS) end users' report, AI and HPDA Usage and Future Technology Trends. Key findings from the report are summarized in this document.

Hyperion Research forecasts that the worldwide HPC technical server market to grow at 8.0% CAGR to 2025. Within the 13 verticals tracked, five are expected to exceed $1B in revenue in 2021, and three others are poised to pass that mark in the forecast period.

Although technical servers and their associated compute and memory elements receive much of HPC infrastructure focus and attention, storage and interconnects are becoming increasingly prominent elements within the HPC ecosystem. This is reflected in the 2021 iteration of Hyperion Research's annual HPC Multi-Client Study: Trends and Forecasts in HPC Storage and Interconnects report. Key findings from the report are summarized in this document.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In September 2021, the 77th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Dave Turek, the Chief Technology Officer at Catalog, a new company focused on biological computing. Turek provided insights on biological methods of storing information and how his team is seeking to help shift storage and compute paradigms and create tools to manage the recent and continuing explosion of useful data.

Hyperion Research forecasts that the worldwide HPC broader market (servers, storage, software, and services) will expand at a 7.9% CAGR to nearly $40B in 2025. HPC servers comprise about half of broader market revenues and are expected to grow at a similar rate (8.0% CAGR) to reach nearly $20B in 2025. Storage is forecasted to show the highest growth (9.3% CAGR).

Hyperion Research forecasts that the worldwide HPC server market will reach $14.5B in 2021. Nearly half of the worldwide spend on HPC servers currently come from North America, primarily from US customers. Hyperion Research anticipates that the worldwide HPC technical server market will grow at an 8.0% CAGR over the forecast period (2020-2025) to reach nearly $20B in 2025.

In September 2021, the 77th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Dr. Sean Peisert, computer security research lead and staff scientist and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He provided insights on security in high-performance computing environments, specifically about how emerging technologies and research can advance cybersecurity as an enabling capability as opposed to an impedance to optimal performance or other barrier for users.

Hyperion Research is projecting the HPC cloud market to exhibit a five-year CAGR of nearly 17% and reach $9.3 billion in end user spending in 2025. The key verticals driving much of the growth include: the bio-sciences and manufacturing sectors, as well as the economics/finance sector and the EDA sector, to name a few.

A recent survey revealed that HPC end users are looking to change the way they outfit their next HPCs, with many interested in exploring new types of processors, relying increasingly on GPUs and other accelerators to support computational gains, and preparing to increase their budgets to afford continued acquisition of more powerful HPCs. Insights into the critical factors driving these and other trends are detailed in the 2021 iteration of Hyperion Research's annual MCS end users' study, Processors, Coprocessors/Accelerators, and HPC budgets. Key Findings from the report are summarized in this document.

The August 2021 issue of the International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), a peer-reviewed research journal, included a paper based on the work of three researchers from India's St. Francis Institute of Technology (SFIT) summarizing their use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods to help alleviate water shortages in India caused by population growth, urbanization, and climate change. Verlekar, Shah, and Kulkarni used a machine learning model to create a proactive scheme for managing local water resources, work that was prompted by a 2019 drought that impacted the Chennai area of India.

Recently, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) trained the first large artificial intelligence (AI) model designed to understand, speak, and write in the Spanish language. The system, named MarIA, was trained on the MareNostrum supercomputer at the BSC, leveraging 59 TBs of language data from the Biblioteca Nacional de España, one of the world's largest public libraries. The model is said to be an expert in both writing and understanding the Spanish language and is free to use by any developer, company, or entity. The system has a wide variety of potential applications including summarization applications, chatbots, smart searches, translation engines, and automatic subtitling chatbots.

HPC datacenters have been improving their energy consumption and environmental sustainability profiles. Verne Global, a high-intensity-compute cloud colocation services provider, has emerged as a leader in delivering 100 percent renewable, global HPC cloud resources, powered by Iceland's natural hydroelectric and geothermal energy. Digital 9 Infrastructure plc (D9), a newly formed UK- based investment trust company that invests in a range of digital infrastructure assets, has acquired Verne Global in a deal valued at approximately £231 million.

During the recent conference held by the Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining held in Singapore, three international public science policy advocacy groups presented a guide, Using Artificial Intelligence to Support Healthcare Decisions, aimed at empowering and educating the public on the growing use of AI platforms in the healthcare decision-making process. The guide covers explanations of common applications of artificial intelligence platforms in healthcare and, more importantly, outlines specific questions one can pose to cut to the core of the efficacy and reliability of an AI platform in those applications.

CATALOG recently announced major advancements in developing both storage and computers based on synthetic DNA as the fundamental building block. Continuous innovations in high performance computing (HPC) architectures are required by the ever-increasing challenges that scientists, researchers, and data analysts are expected to overcome. Traditional architectures are evolving as best they can to address each of the above areas. At some point, however, investments in traditional architectures will reach diminishing returns for certain workloads and use cases, driven by some economic reality. One promising non-traditional approach being actively pursued to address these complex challenges is the use and application of synthetic DNA for both storage and computational applications.

Ten leading German corporations recently stood up the Quantum Technology and Applications Consortium (QUTAC) to explore and promote the commercial application of quantum computing (QC) targeted for the German industrial base as a way to ensure German competitive advantage across a broad array of industries. The effort spans industrial sectors and founding members that include automotive manufacturing (Bosch, BMW, and Volkswagen), chemical and pharmaceutical (BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Merck), insurance (Munich Re) and technology (Infineon, SAP, and Siemens). AIRBUS is participating as an external contributor.

The HPC market is a dynamic environment from just about every perspective. Whether it be technology, business engagements and partnerships, or datacenter upgrade plans, there is rarely a dull moment. The first half of 2021 was no exception. This report provides HPC storage-related highlights and analysis of notable activity that occurred within the global HPC community over the past six months across several fronts including:

Building on its Budget 2021 commitment to launch a seven year $360 million National Quantum Strategy, the Government of Canada recently stood up a public survey website to gather insights on how to implement the plan. The survey covers a comprehensive set of issues including best practices on academic, government and private sector partnerships, talent and workforce challenges and opportunities, mechanisms to ensure equity, diversity, and inclusion, adoption of quantum technologies by Canadian entities, and identification of any significant gaps, barriers, or challenges that could hinder Canadian efforts to become a global leader in quantum technologies.

Using biological building blocks in place of traditional materials to assemble computers has been a research topic for many years, but recently the first potential commercial use cases have begun to emerge, centered on storage for large data sets. The DNA Storage Alliance, created to promote a storage ecosystem based on synthesized DNA strands, recently shared their aspirations for the emerging technology that offers significant promise in durability, simplicity, cost, and density over traditional magnetic counterparts. The initial goals of the alliance are to educate the public and raise awareness about DNA-based storage. Further out, the alliance may pursue the creation of specifications and standards, such as encoding, physical interfaces, retention, and file systems, to ensure that DNA-based solutions complement existing storage hierarchies. The alliance notes that expectations for the growth rate of current storage mechanisms cannot keep pace with the rising demand for data storage, particularly where growing data retention and related data mining efforts are driving the need to save increasingly larger data sets for longer periods of time. Such requirements are well suited to DNA-based archive storage characteristics in applications including digital content creation, robotics, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, astronomy, and climate science.

Late last month, US Department of Defense (DOD) leadership explored the potential to inculcate artificial intelligence (AI) processes into its overall military operations, signaling a fundamental change in how information and data are used to increase the decision space for leaders both in military and civilian domains. Delivered during the third and most recent iteration of the Global Information Dominance Experiment (GIDE 3), which included representatives from all 11 combatant commands, NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Glen D. VanHerck's remarks on AI were aimed at progressing the ability to maintain domain awareness, achieve information dominance, and provide decision superiority in both competition and crisis.

In May 2021, the 76th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Richard Lawrence, IT Fellow for Supercomputing at the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service. He provided updates on their current activities, challenges, and goals, as well as gave insights into their procurement process and what the community can expect from the Met Office in the upcoming years.

Two weeks ago, the US Department of Defense officially canceled its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud solicitation and contract, ending a long period of uncertainty and controversy. Originally, the contract, which designated $10 billion to support cloud computing capabilities for a variety of workloads and departments across the DoD, had been awarded to a single vendor, Microsoft Azure, in 2019. However, after appeals from other vendors, the process was reevaluated. Ultimately Microsoft was awarded the contract a second time. After nearly two years into the JEDI solicitation and award process, the DoD stated that their needs had evolved, and the original contract no longer aligned with the requirements of the department. A new solicitation was issued, the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract, which indicated a plan to use multiple vendors to fulfill the needs of the contract. Currently, the DoD is seeking proposals from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services but will likely evaluate other qualified U.S. based CSPs.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In May 2021, the 76th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Sanzio Bassini, Director of SuperCalculation, Applications & Innovation Dept. at the CINECA consortium. He is currently a member of the EuroHPC Infrastructure Advisory Board and Leader of the EuroHPC Italian Pre-Exascale Infrastructure Leonardo Project. Bassini provided important updates on CINECA’s family of supercomputers, their evolving use cases and applications, as well as their plans to expand capabilities and continue empowering research scientists in Europe and around the world.

Several years ago, anecdotal evidence led Hyperion Research to compile a list of applications that promised to be the most economically important HPC-enabled AI use cases. Rather than simply drawing attention as interesting one-off examples, these applications had emerged as repetitive AI workloads that vendors could begin to pursue as emerging market segments. Hyperion Research's recently completed multi-client study of the worldwide HPC market presented a direct opportunity to ask HPC user organizations whether they use or plan to use any of the economically important HPC-enabled AI applications.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In May 2021, the 76th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Tina Declerck, System Department Head at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), titled Perlmutter: A System for Simulation, AI, and Data. In addition to updates on NERSC and its role as the Mission HPC facility for the DOE Office of Science, Declerck provided information on the developments of the new Perlmutter system, its capabilities, structure, and future.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In May 2021, the 76th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Michael Brown, Principal Engineer, Intel. Brown provided updates on Intel's progress on optimizing NAMD for Intel's new instruction set architecture, how it interacts with their most recent processor offerings, and how Intel is looking to the future of molecular dynamics.

MLCommons, an international artificial intelligence (AI) standards body formed in 2018, launched MLPerf Tiny, their first benchmark targeted at the inference capabilities of edge and embedded devices, or what they call "intelligence in everyday devices". The new benchmark is now part of the overall MLPerf benchmark suite, which measures AI training and inference performance on a wide variety of workloads, including natural language processing and image recognition. The benchmark covers four machine learning (ML) tasks focused on camera and microphone sensors as inputs: keyword spotting, visual wake words, tiny image classification, and anomaly detection. Some important use cases include smart home security, virtual assistants, and predictive maintenance.

The European Processor Initiative (EPI) recently announced that it had released its European Processors Accelerator Chip (EPAC1.0) test chip design to a semiconductor maker for fabrication. The chip consists of multiple accelerator options including a vector processing unit, a stencil and tensor accelerator, and a variable precision processor, along with supporting RISC-V cores and memory access hardware. The 25 mm2 chip will be manufactured by US-based semiconductor maker Global Foundries using their low-voltage, low-power, 22 nanometer, 22FDX process platform.

Japan's NTT, the fourth largest telecommunications company in the world, recently announced the formation of a cooperative organization of Japanese firms designed to promote Japan's technical position in quantum technologies and to help Japan complete globally with US and Chinese rivals in both quantum computing and quantum communications. The inaugural meeting of the group, held in late May 2021, was attended by 11 Japanese companies, including leading IT suppliers Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, and Toshiba as well as industrial partners including Toyota Motor, Mitsubishi Chemical, and the Mizuho Financial Group. More than 50 companies are ultimately expected to join the group.

The U.S. Senate passed the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) on June 8th, a major step forward in providing support and financial investment in furthering the United States' competitive capabilities in technology, including semiconductor capabilities. The USICA is bipartisan legislation intended to give federal funding to key science and technology areas, including STEM research, technology transfer, semiconductor research and manufacturing, as well as NASA research activities. The bill also seeks to establish a framework for agencies including the NSF and DOE to collaborate in these areas, to help ensure U.S. leadership in science and technology.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In May 2021, the 76th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Bill Mannel, Vice President and General Manager of HPC, HPE, and Justin Hotard, Senior VP and General Manager of HPC & Mission Critical Solutions (MCS), HPE, as an update on some of the important projects going on at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Mannel and Hotard had three major topics for this update: ongoing integration with Cray in the wake of the 2019 acquisition, the recent leadership changes at HPE, and the role HPE plays in the emerging exascale environment.

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In May 2021, the 76th HPC User Forum took place virtually. This update summarizes a presentation from that virtual conference given by Chuck Gilbert, the Technical Director of Solutions Architecture at AMD. He gave updates on the most recent AMD CPU offerings, developments in heterogeneous architecture, and AMD's role in the future of high-performance computing. To Gilbert and the leadership at AMD, high performance computing is at the center of today's world and has improved every aspect of our lives. He explained that the market is now in a high-performance computing megacycle driven by the vast demands of cloud computing, digital transformation, 5G, and AI.

The HPC cloud market is continuing to rise as new users begin to adopt HPC cloud resources and existing users increase their spending and utilization of the cloud for HPC applications. Adoption and utilization of the cloud for HPC has varied based not only on the type of user but also on geography and the sizes of systems HPC users deploy on-premises.

Japan's RIKEN and Fujitsu recently announced the opening of the RIKEN RQC-Fujitsu Collaboration Center to support joint research and development of foundational technologies necessary to the development of quantum computers (QC), with a near-term goal of producing a 1000 qubit superconducting quantum computer. RIKEN has world-class skills in leading-edge scientific research including a range of quantum technologies while Fujitsu has demonstrated long-standing expertise in developing and fielding some of the highest performing advanced computing systems in the world. Such a combination could yield significant technology gains in the sector and open new areas of quantum computing applications and end uses. If able to successfully transition the results of this collaboration into commercial offerings, Fujitsu stands to become a strong competitor to leading commercial QC developers in the US and EU.

HPC in the cloud is augmenting many HPC users' access to resources today as utilization of cloud grows at an aggressive rate, causing HPC centers to create plans for how to effectively use public clouds as part of their approach to running HPC workloads. This includes future system planning as well as in-house personnel decisions for handling data center management. Many HPC users and datacenter managers are investigating the potential tradeoffs, benefits, and downsides of on-premise deployments and cloud utilization.

As workloads become more diverse and traditional enterprise datacenters are increasingly adopting HPC and HPC-enabled AI workloads, middleware is receiving more attention as part of the overall solution. HPC users desire a more intuitive experience and want to deal with fewer vendors. Middleware vendors want to expand their product portfolios and increase the markets they serve. Expanding product portfolios and increasing market reach can be achieved largely through either investment in current product lines or via strategic acquisitions. A recent example of the latter is Altair's acquisitions of Univa and Ellexus.

RIKEN's Fugaku, currently the fastest high performance computer (HPC) in the world, recently passed a critical development milestone by completing its initial testing phase. As a result, the system will become available for general shared use on March 9, 2021. The Fugaku supercomputer has been in development since 2014, and in addition to its world-leading computational performance capabilities, its overall design was targeted with an application-first philosophy to tackle some of the world's most pressing challenges including medicine, pharmacology, disaster prediction and prevention, environmental sustainability and energy. Fugaku is a joint development effort between RIKEN, Japan's largest HPC research organization, and Fujitsu, one of Japan’s largest commercial suppliers of high[1]end computing systems.

As HPC workloads are diversifying, processor needs are evolving and HPC users are increasingly demanding greater processor variety. The processor market is also growing overall as HPC users are incorporating more processors, and a greater range of processors, into their computer architectures. This combination is generating opportunities for companies able to provide new and better performing processor and coprocessor solutions. In response, new players are emerging, and many existing players are pivoting to provide innovative products. Meanwhile, some major HPC companies are leveraging acquisitions, mergers, and partnerships to assimilate new product offerings.

As the world's two largest economies and recognized world-class science and technology (S&T) developers, China and the United States are aware of how important technological prowess has become in projecting geopolitical leadership from an economic and national security perspective, and each place significant weight on national S&T polices to help ensure those ends. Recently, the leadership of both China and the United States had occasion to make public their long[1]term strategic S&T visions:

• China's President Xi Jinping highlighted that China is seeking to replace the US as the acknowledged global leader in S&T capability, and Beijing will likely continue its on-going efforts to transform its overall S&T infrastructure from that of a fast follow nation to one of global leadership while reducing its dependency on foreign S&T sources.
• US President Joe Biden emphasized that although the US has a long legacy of world-class technological prowess, emphasis should shift to better position S&T progress to help support key societal imperatives including public health, climate change, and economic inclusiveness. In additional, President Biden charged policymakers with fostering renewed support for R&D funding that not only ensures US S&T primacy going forward but that also fosters the wide base of existing and potential new US commercial entities to quickly turn research breakthroughs into innovative products.

Now more than ever, the key elements needed for high performance computing (HPC) performance leadership are a keen understanding of the system requirements to optimally support a growing array of heterogenous workloads and applications combined with the knowledge and creativity to realize the most appropriate hardware and software designs. The El Capitan machine being jointly developed by HPE and LLNL for the DoE NNSA ASC program provides two strong examples of exascale-driven architectural innovation: the Rabbit near-compute storage element and the Flux resource manager.

Although China represents more than one-third of the global market for semiconductors, the country relies heavily on foreign sources, especially U.S. chipmakers and foundries headquartered in other Asian countries, for a majority of devices critical to Chinese-made products ranging from smartphones to industrial machinery and supercomputers. For the past few decades, China sought to develop an indigenous capability in an effort to reduce its dependence on the foreign supply of components. Its most recent major effort, the “Made-in-China” semiconductor initiative launched in 2015, targeted supplying 40% of China's semiconductor demand with homegrown products by 2020 and 70% by 2025.

The European Commission (EC) has announced the Digital Europe Program, a new €7.5 billion effort designed to accelerate supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and advanced digital skills, across the economy and society. Its overall goal is to help EU member states increase their capabilities in crucial areas of high-end computing and the relevant technologies to provide a foundation for driving Europe’s 21st century economy.

In late January of 2021, Origin Quantum (OriginQ), China's first domestic quantum computing (QC) start up, successfully raised US$15.4 million in a Series A round needed to continue development of its full-stack QC system capability. Its current QC system, the Wu Yuan, incorporates OriginQ's inhouse developed quantum processor, the KF C6-130, that has six superconducting qubits. Despite such examples of progress, continued advancement by the small number of commercial Chinese QC developers is not assured. China's significant and broad base of government funding for QC research and its resulting world-class capabilities primarily resides within Chinese government facilities. Improved mechanisms for transferring or independently fostering those same skills within the nascent Chinese QC commercial sector may be needed if Chinese commercial QC vendors are to close the technology and product development gap with leading-edge US and European commercial QC counterparts.

Covid-19 has impacted the worldwide HPC ecosystem in a variety of manners, leading to unpredictable changes in spending trends on systems, production, and installation of those systems, as well as changes in the sources of users' compute resources. Hyperion Research conducts surveys throughout the year to ask buyers for their expected short-term and long-term HPC spending changes in order to keep a tab on the ebbs and flows of the market. This Special Analysis explores changes in short-term budgets and expected spending. Due to the ever-changing situation of the world, these surveys have become critical in understanding, and predicting, the short-term spending trends of HPC buyers.

As more HPC users look to leverage the cloud to augment their on-prem resources or run cloud-natively, containers have emerged as a viable portable method for deploying their workloads more easily, consistently, and repeatedly anywhere (on-prem, in the cloud, or hybrid), decoupled from any one vendor's HPC system or single CSP's framework. Containers also aim to address requirements demanded by both HPC and enterprise IT datacenters (performance, automation, ease of application deployment, security, reliability, and scalability), an important attribute as enterprise IT datacenters increasingly adopt HPC infrastructure to implement their HPDA and AI workflows.

The French Government recently announced a national program worth over 1.8 billion euros (US $2.18 billion) over five years targeted to propel France into a global leadership position in a wide range of quantum technologies, including quantum-based computers, sensors, post-quantum cryptography, and communications. Specific quantum computing budgets are shared across near-term quantum simulator and NISQ system development as well as longer-term universal error corrected quantum systems. Albeit a strong comprehensive plan, France is one of the last major nations to come out with a wide-ranging national plan to spur innovation in quantum technologies and could be in catch-up mode for at least the next few years.

The recovery of the on-premise HPC server market continues to gain momentum, showing consistent revenue increases over the last two quarters, while easing some of the first quarter 2020 revenue losses that resulted from the economic fallout of the covid-19 virus. Specifically, the third quarter of 2020 exhibited a seasonal revenue growth of 3.4% to reach $3.4 billion in sales for the quarter, up 11.7% from the previous quarter and building on the 12.0 % quarter on quarter increase from 2Q2020.

Since the dawn of the Supercomputer Era in the 1960s, a succession of base processors (CPUs) has attempted to satisfy HPC users' nearly insatiable demands for fast solution times on a wide spectrum of challenging problems, combined with affordability and energy efficiency. Chief among these entrants were vector processors, which ruled the HPC market through the 1990s, then RISC processors, and then x86-based processors, which began their steep ascendancy at that time and continue to dominate the market today, often in tandem with GPUs or other accelerators.

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.

Hyperion Research has followed the growth of accelerators in HPC for more than 10 years. Accelerators had an initially slow HPC adoption curve but have recently experienced amplified growth. Within the HPC accelerator market, GPUs, particularly those from Nvidia, have dominated. Although originally designed as gaming processors for graphics rendering, GPUs were found to be well suited to a range of HPC applications, plus critical underlying AI functions, such as matrix multiplication, driving impressive performance gains. As a result, many HPC sites across a broad range of verticals are now using accelerators to speed up a larger portion of their increasingly AI-based workloads.

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.

The US Government's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently released a Federal strategic plan for a whole-of-nation approach to pioneering the future national advanced computing ecosystem that targets key application drivers and strategic objectives considered essential to US leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security. The plan specifically called out three critical application areas:

• • Extreme scale modeling and simulation
  • Data-intensive application workflows
  • End-to-end and real-time application workflows

The plan also arrays a number of key strategic objectives, including:

• • The development of an advanced ecosystem that spans government, academia, non-profits and industry
  • The support of foundational, applied and translational research
  • The expansion of a diverse, capable and flexible workforce

The strategic plan delineates US government agency roles and responsibilities and describes essential operational and coordination structures necessary to support and implement its objectives.

The HPC market is experiencing many challenges and opportunities from the covid-19 virus and its resulting economic impacts. In July 2020, the situation appeared bleak, with a potential for 2020 HPC server revenues being down by as much as 20% year on year. More recently, surveys show an improved outlook, although still with a market contraction of approximately 14% compared with 2019. The Workgroup segment is bearing the near-term brunt of the downside impact.

Covid-related HPC investment impacts are not equally distributed across the vertical markets; several segments are already experiencing increased HPC investments. These include bio/life sciences and government labs. At the same time other verticals are facing a greater negative impact, including oil & gas, manufacturing, and DCC/content distribution

Genomic modeling using high performance computing is beginning to prove its worth in the fight against the 2019 SARS-COV-2 (covid-19) pandemic. Using supercomputing resources at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), researchers have found a specific gene expression profile that makes patients particularly susceptible to some of the worst effects of the virus. This genomic pattern appears to be tied to biological pathways that explain many of the symptoms encountered by patients struggling to overcome the infection. As a result of this work, clinicians may be able to exploit a set of existing drugs to treat high-risk covid-19 patients.

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