by Michael Feldman, HPCwire Editor
There was plenty of action in the HPC arena this year: the leap forward in GPU computing, the spread of cloud computing into the HPC realm, and the continuing multicore juggernaut, to name a few. But what really dominated the news from week to week in 2009 was the effect of the recession on HPC vendors. Payrolls across the industry were slashed — by shedding employees and cutting salaries — and company reorganizations became almost as common as product launches.
But the most visible and lasting outcome of the recession was the level of vendor consolidation that took place. Eleven companies in the HPC space were either acquired or went out of business in 2009. A number of these firms, including Sun Microsystems and SGI, were already in dire straits and were pushed over the edge by the worsening economy. Others were promising startups that simply ran out of cash and venture capital before they could establish a customer base. We recap all their stories here.
