HPE vs Bull (ex Eviden) for NVIDIA AI servers.
Side by side from our vendor index: what each firm actually designs, which NVIDIA platforms it ships, and the identity facts that shape a procurement decision. Sources and full detail live on each profile.
HPE
HPE brings the Cray lineage to enterprise AI: genuine in-house direct-liquid-cooling engineering proven on exascale systems, applied to ProLiant and Cray XD NVIDIA platforms up to GB300 NVL72 scale. Strong where the buyer wants supercomputing discipline with OEM support.
- Cray supercomputing heritage (acquired 2019): the source of HPE's HPC and DLC engineering stack
- Industry's first 100% fanless direct liquid cooling architecture (Oct 2024): 8-element design covering GPU, CPU, blade, storage, fabric, rack, pod and CDU; claims 90% cooling-power reduction vs air
- Slingshot: proprietary Cray-developed interconnect used in DOE exascale systems
- iLO BMC: HPE designs its own iLO ASIC with silicon root of trust
Bull (ex Eviden)
Bull (the Eviden name is being retired) is genuine in-house rack-scale engineering: fan-less warm-water DLC proven at exascale on JUPITER, designed and built at its own Angers factory, and 100% French-State owned since March 2026. The European sovereign choice. Note that its NVL72-class Blackwell racks currently come via a Supermicro distribution deal, not its own chassis.
- Genuine in-house design house: BullSequana XH3500 (Nov 2025) ships fan-less 5th-generation direct liquid cooling, an iterative in-house DLC lineage
- Continuous supercomputer engineering from Bull (1931) through BullSequana XH2000, XH3000, XH3500: own board, blade and rack engineering by internal R&D
- BullSequana servers designed by internal R&D and manufactured entirely at the Angers, France factory, with an in-house staging lab for acceptance testing
- JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer, runs on BullSequana XH3000 with Bull's patented DLC; its JEDI module topped the June 2025 Green500
The right vendor depends on the workload, the facility and the timeline, not the brand. The assessment sizes both against your requirements and returns quoted pricing, with our margin disclosed.
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