HPE announced on Wednesday, November 12, 2026, two new offerings for supercomputing and AI infrastructure: new hybrid configurations of the HPE Cray E2000 (HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000), which the company describes as the world's fastest hybrid supercomputing storage, and the HPE Rack Management Controller, designed to manage high-density, liquid-cooled racks. The announcement was made in Houston, ahead of the SC26 supercomputing conference, which runs November 15–20 in Chicago.
Hybrid storage for HPC
The new HPE Cray E2000 configurations combine SSDs with 32-terabyte SAS-4 HDDs in new enclosures holding 74 or 100 drives. According to HPE, the hybrid setup delivers up to 41% more data throughput per rack than its main competitor, DDN, along with up to 116 GB per second of read throughput and 92 GB per second of write throughput per rack.
The pitch is economic: with prices for large-capacity SSDs rising, HPE is betting on hybrid storage so customers spend less on storage and redirect investment toward compute nodes. The company says the new configurations cost 82% less than a comparable all-flash system and offer up to 32% more usable capacity per rack, without expanding the data center footprint.
“When making long-term investments in environments where advanced workloads are rapidly evolving, our customers want scalable, dense, and flexible systems,” said Trish Damkroger, senior vice president and general manager of HPC and AI Infrastructure Solutions at HPE.
Intelligent liquid cooling
The second launch, the HPE Rack Management Controller, is designed for intelligent liquid cooling: real-time monitoring, leak detection, automated control, and rack-level visibility. It will initially support HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 systems and integrates with the HPE Supercomputing Management Software suite, including the Foundation, Composable, and Observability modules. Support for AMD and NVIDIA rack-scale systems is planned for June 2027.
The new hybrid HPE Cray E2000 configurations are planned for availability in early 2027. The Rack Management Controller and management software arrive in March 2027.
The announcement lands days before SC26, the international supercomputing conference, where vendors traditionally unveil HPC and AI infrastructure. HPE has been expanding its supercomputing portfolio: in October, the company sent the Spaceborne Computer-4 to the Moon to run AI and HPC benchmarks.
Image credit: HPE / HPE newsroom. The image shows a technologist working in the company's liquid cooling lab.
Sources: HPE — official announcement · Business Wire
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checked against public posts and internet sources. The performance and cost figures are HPE's claims and have not been independently verified. Please consult the original sources to confirm the information.
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