High performance computing

STORDIS & the HPC market

STORDIS identifies the best combination of products to meet the requirements of the HPC markets, and partnered fairly earlier on with the following manufacturers:

• Myricom, the pioneer in HPC interconnect technology and one of the catalysts driving the growth of High Performance Computing on commodity hardware; now in their fourth generation of networking products.
• Fujitsu, the pioneer of 10Gb Ethernet Switches. The Fujitsu XG-series of switches offer high-performance and high-speed Layer 2 switching. Featuring ultra-low latency, flexible interfaces and compact form factors, the switches are ideal for high-performance computing (HPC)
• Dot Hill. For over 20 years, Dot Hill has delivered high performance RAID solutions that are certified with Microsoft and VMware and used for many kinds of applications including administration, research, video post-production.

On August 1st 2007 Dot Hill was appointed as a nominated supplier of storage solutions under the terms of the NSSA agreement (UK National Server & Storage Agreement)

The vast majority of HPC sites that purchase HPC Interconnect buy commercial products based on a standard technology: InfiniBand, 1Gb Ethernet, 10Gb Ethernet.

IDC ‘s research** published in October 2011 states that since 2006, the Ethernet market share has stayed constant (44%) in a growing market, while InfiniBand (38%) has rapidly gained market share over the proprietary interconnects ( 18%); with particularly strong growth in the high-end HPC systems.

Some of key HPC challenges to be addressed and that will drive the growth of that market: memory wall, parallel programming, time-to-solution, power, space.

HPC Market Trends

In May 2011 Intersect360 Research published the result of a Study commissioned by the HPC Advisory Council, titled HPC Market Report and Forecast, made public to the HPC Community .

Study that combines both the High Performance Technical Computing (HPTC) seen as the Traditional HPC market e.g Science and Engineering, which still holds a 71% market share and the High Performance Business Computing (HPBC) - formely referred as Edge HPC - e.g Financial Services, media/entertainment, complex event processing, business process optimization, virtual environments, ultrascale business computing, holding the remaining 29% market share.
The studies reveals that the overall HPC market revenue was up from 22,4% from the recessionary 2009, to reach $25.6 Billion in 2010.

This revenue comprises primarily of servers, storage, software, services and network products*. The servers represent the largest segment but is slightly declining; when the highest growth rate is anticipated in storage and services, to reach a total global market of $36 Billion in 2015, that is a $10 Billion growth from 2011-2015.

North America continues to lead with 46,6% (2011) but declining in share, while EMEA (30,8% in 2011) and Asia Pacific (20% in 2011) have similar growth.

* the network revenue represents only the networking products purchased separately
** “Status of the Worldwide HPC Interconnect Market”, IDC Research, October 2011