The high-performance computing (HPC) market may not be on your radar, but maybe it should. Did you know that HPC is very much a value-add market? No? Well, it is.

HPC is the ability to process data and perform complex calculations at high speeds. It is often, and alternatively, called supercomputing.

More traditional – or classic – HPC is proprietary with a lot custom technology. Today, just about all high -performance computers are based on standard technology — processors that you may find in a standard laptop. The difference between the two is the number of processors, one or hundreds of thousands. Additionally, HPC demands huge amounts of memory, even when compared to a traditional data center. And the same for storage.

Emerging high performance computing is about going more mainstream, and into the private sector. HPC was more common in government and academia, and in industries such as aerospace, automotive and pharmaceutical. More recently, high-performance computers are found in the enterprise data center to run business operations.

In 2019, the high performance computing server market totaled $13.7 billion, according to Hyperion Research. What may surprise you is the breakdown of that revenue. Supercomputers over $500,000 account for $5.1 billion; divisional ($250,000-$500,000) account for $2.6 billion; departmental ($100,000-$250,000) brought in $4 billion; and workgroup (under $100,000) account for $2 billion.

The total number of units shipped in 2019 in all price categories was a little more than 87,000.

Peruse our slideshow above for a closer look at the high performance computing market today, including information about big players IBM and Dell, as well as the move Microsoft is making.