Worldwide factory revenue for the high performance computing (HPC) technical server market touched $2.4bn in the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 3.1% when compared to $2.3bn in the same quarter previous, according to a new report from IDC.
IDC maintains its previous forecast that for full-year 2012 the HPC technical server market revenue will reach $11bn, increase of about 7.1% over the 2011.
IDC noted unit shipments in the first quarter declined 0.5% to 28,747 compared to the same quarter of 2011, as average selling prices continued to grow during an ongoing shift to large system sales.
Revenue in the high-end supercomputers segment jumped 13.9% over the first quarter of 2011 to reach $976m, while revenue from Workgroup HPC systems, selling for below $100,000, fell 4.6% year over year but rose sequentially by 5.1% from the last quarter of 2011.
The high-end supercomputers segment accounted for 39.9% of worldwide HPC technical server revenue, while the divisional segment captured 12.7% of revenue, the departmental segment made up 35.3% of revenue, and the workgroup segment contributed 12.2%.
IDC programme vice president for Technical Computing Earl Joseph said, "We expect the global race for HPC leadership in the petascale-exascale era to continue heating up during this decade."
The HPC technical server market is likely to grow at 7.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $14bn in revenues by 2016, IDC said.
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HP was the leader in the HPC server revenues with 30.5% market share, closely followed by IBM with a share of 29%, and Dell stood at third place with 16% of global revenues.
Cray, Fujitsu and SGI reported strong year-over-year revenue gains in first quarter of 2012, driven by the acceptance of large systems.
