Infotech Lead Asia: IBM and HP are leading high performance computing (HPC) technical server market in Q3 with 33.1 percent and 25.7 percent revenue share, respectively.
Fujitsu, driven by its K system deployment, has more than 16.1 percent of the worldwide revenue in Q3.
However, over the first three quarters of 2012, Dell maintained its third position.
Cray (+14.4 percent), SGI (+19.7 percent), and Bull (+18.7 percent) made strong year-over year revenue gains during the third quarter of 2012, driven by the acceptance of large systems.
China’s Dawning showed momentum at 2.7 percent.
IDC said worldwide factory revenue grew 40.3 percent to reach $3.3 billion, up from $2.6 billion in the same period of 2011.
The HPC technical server market will reach $11 billion for the full year 2012, expanding by about 7 percent over 2011 revenues of $10.3 billion.
The growth in Q3 was fuelled by very large systems sold by Fujitsu and IBM.
The brightest spot continued to be the high-end Supercomputers segment, consisting of HPC systems sold for $500,000 and up. Revenue in this segment jumped 80.6 percent over the second quarter of 2012 to $2.1 billion.
Revenue from Workgroup HPC systems, sold for below $100,000, grew slightly at 5.4 percent compared to 2Q12, and declined 8.8 percent year over year. Workgroup HPC systems were especially hard hit by the global economic recession, but IDC expects this segment to rebound in the coming five-year period.
In the third quarter of 2012, the high-end Supercomputers segment accounted for 62.4 percent of worldwide HPC technical server revenue, while the Divisional segment ($250,000 to $499,000 price band) captured 10.2 percent of revenue. The Departmental segment ($100,000 to $249,000 price band) made up 19.3 percent of revenue, and the Workgroup segment contributed 8.1 percent.
Third quarter 2012 unit shipments of 23,659 increased by 3.4 percent over the previous quarter, as average selling prices continued to grow during an ongoing, multi-year shift to large system sales.
During the first three quarters of 2012, the HPC technical server market grew by 8.3 percent, with a decline of 13.1 percent in unit shipments, compared to the same period in 2011. The high end Supercomputers segment experienced growth of 39.4 percent in the first three quarters of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. Revenue for Workgroup HPC systems experienced a decline 11.3 percent when compared to the first three quarters in 2011.
IDC expects the HPC technical server market to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.3 percent over the 2012-2016 forecast period to reach revenues of $14 billion by 2016.
