Supercomputers Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecast (2022 - 2027)

The supercomputers market is expected to register a CAGR of about 9.49% during the forecast period (2022-2027). The increasing use of cloud technology is one of the significant supercomputer market trends. With the growing workload, supercomputing centers are adopting the cloud, and the cloud is running parallel applications as they do not require particular architecture.

Key Highlights

• A modern supercomputer’s architecture is majorly configured with parallel processing, meaning that it splits the problems into pieces while working on several pieces at a time. Exascale computing is a significant trend that has enabled worldwide investment in computing systems. Exascale can provide at least one exaFLOPS (a quintillion) calculation per second.
• Supercomputers substantially contribute to the scientific progress of a country and national security. Many developed countries compete to develop the most sophisticated supercomputing systems and deploy them in their academic and government institutions. Governments are leveraging these computers’ capabilities to solve many frontier challenges. The use of supercomputers has been widespread among all the branches of governments globally.
• The need to stay competitive and develop the most sophisticated systems is fueling the growth among vendors for the market. In June 2021, Forschungszentrum Jülich upgraded the modular supercomputer JURECA to enable capable of 23.5 quadrillion computations per second. The new cluster module JURECA DC is supplied by Atos and is based on the Sequana XH2000 series. It consists of 768 compute nodes, two AMD EPYC Rome CPUs with 64 cores, and 512 GB to 1 TB of main memory.
• However, hacking incidents globally are a valid concern for the development of supercomputers. For instance, in May 2020, multiple supercomputers across Europe were infected with cryptocurrency mining malware and have been shut down to investigate intrusions. Security incidents have been reported in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland, while similar intrusion was reported in computing centers in Spain. Such incidents are forcing companies to focus on the security aspect of supercomputers.
• The demand for data centers, AI, and ML among enterprises, such as government and educational entities, is witnessing exponential growth due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth is positively impacting the demand for supercomputers. It is expected to maintain the same pace until the end of 2022, helping spread the impact and importance of supercomputers in various end-user industries. The increasing cyberattacks are another primary concern where supercomputing is expected to see increasing demand.

Key Market Trends

Increasing Demand for Higher Processing Power to Drive the Market Growth

Enterprises with vast amounts of data to manage and process are looking to analyze this data to aid decision-making. It is also desired by end users to maintain a competitive advantage. Thus, highly data-driven organizations are witnessing significant improvements in decision-making than those who rely less on data. This increasing demand for higher processing power for managing data and decision-making is driving the supercomputers market.

• Many vendors focus on higher processing power for various end-user industries, further driving the market. For instance, in April 2021, ZF launched the latest AI automotive supercomputer with higher processing power. The company's next-generation ProAI system is currently the most flexible, scalable, and robust automotive-grade supercomputer globally.
• Also, in November 2021, Atos and the CEA's Military Applications Division (CEA/DAM) announced the first partition of "EXA1", a supercomputer developed based on Atos' BullSequana XH2000 architecture, which has higher processing power for military and defense applications. It has 12,960 AMD processors, making it the largest ever installed supercomputing system based on general-purpose CPUs worldwide. It has a computing power of 23.2 petaflops and a power consumption of 4.96 MW.
• Researchers at the US Department of Defense are investing in military and defense research. They have also completed significant work on supercomputers, primarily supporting a joint urgent operational request from the US Transportation Command. The project examines methods to significantly mitigate the risk to aircrews and medical attendants' potential airlift of COVID-19 passengers using the air force.
• Many vendors are investing in research purposes and making partnerships in the BFSI sector to implement automation, which is boosting the supercomputer market's growth. For instance, in July 2020, the Royal Bank of Canada's AI research arm, Borealis AI, partnered with Red Hat and Nvidia to develop an AI computing platform to improve the clients’ banking experience.
• Further, many government bodies are investing in high-end projects that drive the supercomputers market. For instance, in June 2021, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) officially put its new supercomputer, the Taiwania 3, into service for academic and research projects related to COVID-19.

Asia-Pacific to Register a Significant Growth Rate

Asia-Pacific has been rapidly growing in terms of technology. Countries like China and Japan are majorly responsible for the rapid growth of supercomputing systems in the region.

• Countries like China have one of the well-developed supercomputing landscapes, with significant investments compared to other countries. For instance, according to Top500.org, as of June 2021, around 188 of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers were located in China, three times more than its nearest competitor, the United States, accounting for an additional 122 supercomputers.
• Moreover, in December 2020, according to Xinhua news agency, researchers from China claimed to have built a quantum computer prototype capable of detecting up to 76 photons through Gaussian boson sampling. Chinese researchers compete against major US corporations, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft Corporation, for a lead in the technology. Additionally, Xi Jinping's government claimed that it is building a USD 10 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences as part of a big push in the field.
• Emerging nations like India are playing a significant role in the growth of the Asia-Pacific market. The National Supercomputing Mission in the country was introduced to raise USD 730 million investment by 2023 to build a supercomputing grid, which will comprise 73 high-performance computing facilities. According to the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India was set to experience a boost in supercomputing capacities by launching 14 new supercomputers deployed by 2020. Once deployed, the total number of supercomputers would grow to 17.
• Japan is another major contributor to the Asia-Pacific supercomputer market, with around 34 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers, including the K computer. Japan's flagship program 2020 aimed to invest more than USD 1 billion to develop more efficient systems than the K computer in the country.
• In November 2020, South Korea funded its first supercomputing CPU designed for AI and HPC. According to the AI Processor Research Department at ETRI, the K-AB21 can pack 16 teraflops per CPU. Such trends in processing capabilities further encourage the growth of supercomputing in the country.

Competitive Landscape

The supercomputers market is consolidated due to a few major players holding a greater market share. Some of the key players include HPE, Atos SE, Dell Inc., FUJITSU Corporation, IBM Corporation, Lenovo Inc., and NEC Technologies India Private Limited.

• June 2021 - Intel partnered with Microsoft for deep co-engineering and collaboration to advance computing, to deliver a completely reimagined computing experience with the upcoming Windows 11, with Intel Bridge Technology. Intel expects to deliver a broad range of computing experiences for Windows 11 with 10th Gen, 11th Gen, and future generations of Intel Core processor-based platforms for consumers, businesses, education, enthusiasts, and more.
• November 2021 - Atos SE partnered with NVIDIA to advance healthcare and climate research computing with Exascale Super Computing under Excellence AI Lab (EXAIL). The project aims to bring scientists and researchers together to help advance European computing technologies, education, and research. The partnership also includes researchers running new AI and deep learning models on Europe’s fastest supercomputer at the Jülich Supercomputing Center.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support

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