ACADEMIA

According to IDC, the worldwide market for high-performance technical servers grew by 30 percent in 2004. IDC's data shows that the market hit $7.25 billion in 2004 up from $5.6 billion in 2003. 2004 marks a recovery for the supercomputing space which fell after hitting a high point of $6.1 billion in 2000 and then declined in 2001. Growth was driven partially by clusters that were worth $2.7 billion or 37 percent of the overall supercomputing market. Systems priced at less than $50,000 (the low end of the market) grew by 65 percent. On the other end, systems priced at over $1 million saw revenue growth of 45 percent. IDC expects the growth in the market in 2005 will be more moderate than in 2004, though they expect continued strong growth for clusters. The growing momentum in the supercomputing space continued for the final quarter of 2004, finishing out 2004 with 30 percent of year-over-year growth. "While we recognize this strong result as a continued market rebound, IDC anticipates a moderate growth pattern to return in the upcoming quarters as the market evolves and stabilizes," said Jie Wu, senior research analyst of technical computing systems at IDC, in a statement. "More high performance computing (HPC) users are seeing their budgets restored to pre-recession levels or even expanded, and new users are entering the market, especially in lower-price point segments," said Earl Joseph, vice president of Technical Computing Systems at IDC. "The HPC market's two-year growth spurt is heavily related to the continuing economic recovery, especially for research and development, which has increased buyer confidence and budget levels for traditional HPC customers. At the same time, systems priced at under $250,000, and especially those priced below $50,000, experienced very strong growth." The largest growth categories were for clusters and low-end servers. An in-depth analysis of segment revenue for clusters revealed double-digit growth across the board, with the largest increase (30%) in the technical capability segment that includes the largest clusters. "Future growth of the HPC market will be more moderate than in 2004, as customers follow the traditional path of adopting evolving technologies," added Chris Willard, vice president of Technical Computing Systems at IDC. "But IDC expects stronger growth to continue for clusters and low-end servers, as hardware and software technologies for these products continue to improve." Clusters from tier 1 and tier 2 vendors grew to represent 46% of the overall market in the fourth quarter of 2004.