By: TOP500 Team

Shopping for high performance computing machinery can be a sobering experience. That’s because buying high-end equipment in bulk is an expensive proposition. A single server costs only a few thousand dollars, but even a relatively modest-sized HPC cluster can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially when software, support and maintenance costs are bundled in. For top tier supercomputers, those costs can climb to $100 million or more.

And even though the price of HPC componentry falls with each passing year, thanks mainly to Moore’s Law, system costs aren’t declining. That’s due primary to the fact that HPC is a unique market, where users are a bottomless pit of desire when it comes to computational performance. As a result, they want as big a system as their funding will allow for.

So it’s no surprise that HPC buyers tend to be a frugal bunch when it comes to system procurement season. What is surprising is that the majority of them aren’t taking advantage of traditional financing and leasing arrangement to make best use of their cash flow and funding cycles.

According to our research, based on surveys of HPC sites from 2011 through 2015, the majority of users are buying their HPC gear outright. In fact, 80 percent of the HPC sites surveyed were not using any leased equipment at all; only 20 percent reported leasing at least some of their HPC hardware. Although we didn’t specifically ask about loans, it’s reasonable to assume that participation rates would be similar.

Read the full article on The Next Platform.