HPE's hybrid Cray E2000 supercomputing storage hustler

What happened

HPE announced a hybrid SSD+HDD Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 array, which it says is the world's fastest hybrid supercomputing storage. The new hybrid configurations combine SSDs with 32-terabyte SAS-4 HDDs, up from the 24 TB drives used previously, plus SAS-4 HDD enclosures supporting 74 or 100 drives. The source explicitly states the cause: a response to higher NAND and SSD prices, which have risen 7x in the past 12 months according to HPE. HPE says customers can spend 82 percent less than on a comparable all-flash system (based on street pricing of 15 PB usable capacity meeting Nvidia specs for a 1,024-GPU cluster), get up to 32 percent more usable capacity per rack, up to 116 GB/s read and 92 GB/s write throughput per rack, and up to 41 percent more data throughput per storage rack versus the next hybrid competitor, DDN. Availability for the new hybrid E2000 configurations is planned for early 2027; the Rack Management Controller and Supercomputing Management Software suite will be available in March 2027, with support for AMD and Nvidia rack-scale systems following in June 2027.

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

Source: Blocks & Files · 11/13/2026 · View original source