New HP Apollo Supercomputers Amps Up IBM Rivalry

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has unwrapped two new Apollo supercomputers, one of which is the first liquid-cooled supercomputer at the high end of the market, signaling the vendor’s intention to extend its lead over IBM (IBM) in the high-performance segment.

HP rolled out its Apollo 6000 and 8000 supercomputer systems, aimed at delivering unmatched supercomputing price performance, at its Discover conference in Las Vegas on June 9. The vendor claimed the Apollo 6000, which can accommodate 160 servers in one rack, outperforms the competition while gobbling up about half of the energy. The unit will be of interest to solution providers selling into the financial services and CAD/CAM design markets, officials said.

It’s the second system, the Apollo 8000, that has drawn considerable attention. HP said it’s the first supercomputer to be cooled by liquid, as in water. The machine, which can hold up to 144 servers per rack, disperses water through channels in its chassis surrounding the computer and circulates it through a pipe system in the data center, HP said.

“There is nothing like this on the market,” Antonio Neri, HP Server Business chief, told Bloomerg. “It sucks the heat from compute servers in a unique way.”

According to researcher IDC, HP is the 2013 high-performance computing (HPC) technical server market leader at a 32.3 percent stake followed by IBM’s 27.7 percent share. Overall, the segment plummeted more than 7 percent to $10.3 billion in 2013. Much of the decline owed to a readjustment from the $11.1 billion it recorded in 2012 when a number of large supercomputer sales spiked its numbers to new levels.

Supercomputers priced at $500,000 and above, which now includes HP’s new Apollo systems, fell nearly 30 percent year over year to $4 billion, IDC said. But the researcher expects the overall HPC market to rebound at a 7.3 percent compound annual growth to a $14 billion segment by 2017.

Channel partners can get their hands on both Apollo systems immediately, HP said. Pricing is available on request based on custom configurations typically associated with high-performance computers.