High performance computing has penetrated beyond government and academic research into aerospace, automotive, petroleum, financial services, life sciences and nuclear industries with immense commercial gains for these industries. Innovations resulting from competitive pressures and the insatiable need for mammoth data into actionable knowledge and insights have fuelled the widespread adoption of supercomputers across these diverse industries. These in turn have fuelled the invention and development of faster and more efficient supercomputers for HPC systems.

This paper is a realistic TCO analysis of the fastest supercomputers today, in a bid to support well informed business and financial decisions when evaluating and deciding on various supercomputing systems available in the marketplace.