IDC Meeting at SC06 Includes Five-Year Forecast

By Nicole Hemsoth

November 24, 2006

During its analyst update breakfast meeting at SC06 last week, IDC unveiled a five-year revenue forecast for the HPC industry, projecting compounded annual growth of about 9 percent to $14.3 billion in 2010, from the 2005 total of $9.2 billion. This compares with industry-wide revenue of $5.9 billion in 2000.

IDC's five-year projection predicts slight growth for the capability segment and continued strong growth for all capacity segments, especially the departmental and workgroup markets. The forecast, delivered by IDC's Addison Snell, included revenue breakdowns by global geographies and application domains.

Snell also reported that HPC market revenue for the first half of 2006 was up 10 percent over the first half of 2005. New HPC users are contributing to the growth.

Leveraged architectures increasingly dominate the HPC market, with more than 95 percent of overall revenue generated by systems based on R&D that was done primarily for non-HPC markets. Linux is also increasingly dominant, representing 65 percent revenue by operating system in the first half of 2006. Linux may be moving more toward proprietary versions, analogous to what happened earlier with UNIX. HP and IBM were the revenue leaders, with Dell in third place. University/academic research was the leading vertical segment for revenue, followed by bio sciences, and government labs.

Key trends include:

  • Continued cluster growth, with cluster market share predicted to top out at 70-80 percent in the future.
  • Low cost no longer provides sufficient differentiation.
  • Software is becoming a critical part of the cost equation.
  • Utility computing will be strongly tested.
  • Linux is not just a single operating system.

Jei Wu discussed IDC's first study on HPC in China. The study looked at industrial end-users. Key findings include:

  • HPC is critical to business success for companies that are exploiting it today.
  • Research institutes and universities are the primary users of HPC today.
  • Technology readiness, available resources and government funding are the enablers for the HPC industry in China.
  • Usage (whether for R&D or production) varies by industry segment.

The Chinese industrial end-users considered foreign HPC offerings superior in quality but higher in cost than domestic products. The number of vendors and options make purchasing a complex, lengthy process; and it's difficult to balance hardware and applications considerations. Similar to the rest of the world, the main purchasing criteria are price, performance, service and the price/performance ratio.

China is one of the fastest-growing markets for overall IT and for HPC. Vendors should understand the market before entering it, and should have long-term strategies. Additional IDC studies in China are under way.

Jei Wu also discussed grids in technical computing, based on IDC studies of the cluster and grid market, and of entry-level HPC users. IDC defines a grid as a set of independent computers that are combined into a unified system through software and networking. Grids are virtual systems.

The IDC study of entry-level HPC users found that 45 percent of these users employ grids today. Only 5 percent plan to purchase utility computing.

Vendors with grid offerings need to help minimize the cultural changes that are slowing grid adoption today, push for more industry-wide standards and for better security.

Chris Willard gave an overview on HPC technical clusters. He noted that cluster revenue has doubled in the past three years, providing essentially all of the growth in the HPC market during this period. Clusters can now perform many types of jobs, and users are looking for premium features. Node-level performance is key. Most clusters are departmental systems. Systems in the capability segment tend to be MPPs, and in the workgroup segment they tend to be SMPs.

Willard presented highlights of IDC's January 2006 cluster end-user study, which found that the three primary buying criteria are price/performance, system throughput, and total cost of ownership. The top challenges are facilities issues (e.g., power and cooling), and system management capability. To expand on this, about equal numbers of the users buy new clusters or add more nodes. The mean number of nodes was 180, of CPUs/core 360, and of sockets 256. Nearly half of all sites (47 percent) used in-house codes, while 45 percent used third-party codes and 10 percent used open source codes.

IDC predicts that technical cluster revenue will grow 16.1 percent to reach $9 billion in 2010. According to Willard, blades are gaining momentum but will move slowly into the market. Storage revenue is growing at a 50 percent-plus annual rate.

Users will pay a premium for superior system designs, integration, ease of use and support. Vendors should not abandon technical excellence. Price/performance will no longer be enough for winning.

Earl Joseph discussed IDC research directions, which includes evaluating petascale options, ISV/middleware scaling issues, storage and data management, processor options and issues with multi-core, and clusters and grids. IDC will ramp up research on China, India and will begin country-level data tracking. IDC is especially interested in end-user success stories and best practices; new partnerships; entry-level users and what limits their HPC usage; and alternative business models, especially for providing R&D funding for custom systems.

Through meetings, studies and papers, IDC's HPC User Forum will begin exploring why the world needs capability computing and why this segment is shrinking. Joseph said IDC welcomes input for developing a taxonomy for capability computing. Drivers for supercomputing include economic factors, advanced innovation and insight, safety and security, and others areas.

Joseph invited the HPC community to participate in upcoming HPC User Forum meetings in India (February 28-March 2, 2007) and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (April 9-11, 2007), as well as the fall meetings in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in Germany. IDC will hold the first HPC User Forum meeting in China in 2008.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire