Factory revenue for the high performance computing (HPC) server market grew 3.9 percent to $2.8 billion in the third quarter of 2016, according to an IDC report.
Revenue of HPC server market for the first three quarters of 2016 rose 3.4 percent to $8.1 billion.
Strong revenue growth in higher-end HPC server systems was partially offset by revenue declines in lower-priced systems in Q3.
Revenue for Supercomputer systems priced at $500,000 jumped 22.3 percent to $985.3 million in the third quarter of 2016.
Revenue from divisional systems priced from $250,000 to $499,000 grew 22.4 percent to $568.4 million in the quarter.
Departmental revenue for systems priced between $100,000 and $249,000 declined 14.4 percent to $836.2 million.
Revenue for Workgroup HPC systems priced below $100,000 declined 8.7 percent to $395.5 million.
Unit shipments of HPC servers decreased to 63,385 in the three quarters of 2016 from 71,479 in the first three quarters of 2015.
The average selling price (ASP) of HPC servers rose from $109,280 in the first third quarter of 2016 to $127,411.
IDC previously reported 7 percent drop in overall server revenue to $12.5 billion in the third quarter of 2016.
“Higher-priced systems led the way with year-over-year growth exceeding 22 percent, while lower-priced system revenue declined,” said Earl Joseph, IDC program vice president for Technical Computing.
Workgroup segment, and especially the departmental segment, substantially ramped up purchases of HPC servers in the period 2012-2015.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has 35.8 percent share of overall HPC server revenue, followed by Dell with 18.5 percent and Lenovo with 8.6 percent.
In the Supercomputers segment, HPE had 37 percent share, while Dell has 13.3 percent, Lenovo has 8.1 percent share and Fujitsu has 7.0 percent share.
The other category captured 22.1 percent of the HPC server market and 21.5 percent of the supercomputers segment. The other category includes more than 30 smaller HPC server system vendors.