Accelerated server spend pushes Q2 data centre capex up 46%

Spending on accelerated servers for data centres grew 46%  in 2Q, says Dell’Oro, while a recovery in the general-purpose Server and Storage System markets appears to be underway, with most of the major OEMs experiencing revenue and unit growth year-to-date.

“The recent surge in data center spending has been fueled by shipments of accelerated servers for generative AI applications, which experienced four consecutive quarters of triple-digit Y/Y revenue growth,” says Dell’Oro’s Baron Fung, “servers equipped with NVIDIA Hopper GPUs and custom accelerators, such as Google TPU and Amazon Trainium, saw increased deployment among hyperscale cloud service providers. Strong demand also came from enterprises and Tier 2 cloud service providers. Meanwhile, despite ongoing economic uncertainties, the general-purpose servers market is gradually recovering, as a refresh to the fourth- and fifth-generation CPU platforms is overdue.”

Worldwide data center capex is forecast for 35 percent growth in 2024, with accelerated servers contributing to most of the growth.

Dell led all OEMs in server revenue in 2Q 2024, followed by HPE and Supermicro. Accelerated servers accounted for an estimated 41 percent of the OEM server revenues during the quarter. White-box server vendors commanded more than a 50 percent revenue share, capitalizing on the hyperscale capex growth cycle.

Double-digit data center capex growth is projected through 2025, driven by new deployments of NVIDIA Blackwell and custom accelerator platforms to the hyperscale and rest of the market.