Hawk Gets a Second Life through Refurbishing

In an effort coordinated by HPE Financial Services, Hawk's hardware — including 4,096 computer nodes, 8,192 processors, and 65,536 memory modules — was carefully dismantled in several phases. Components were shipped to the company's refurbishing center in Erskine, Scotland, where data were securely erased and the hardware was tested for functionality. Following this audit, HPE was able to refurbish and sell more than 90% of Hawk's infrastructure, giving it a second life with several customers, including in the aerospace technology industry.

This approach had numerous environmental and economic benefits. According to HPE:

• This refurbishing avoided approximately 2,800 metric tons of CO₂ emissions — similar to emissions generated by 25,000 hours of individual air travel.
• Around 13.7 metric tons of electronic waste was diverted from landfills, equal to the annual e-waste disposal of 1,700 individuals in Germany.
• This effort resulted in energy savings of almost 64,000 kWh, a similar amount to that required to charge an electric car fully 1,000 times.

HPE reports that the proceeds from sales of the refurbished Hawk components were reinvested into operational services that will support the development of new and improved high-performance computing technologies. Including component refurbishing within a process of infrastructure life cycle management also provides a more environmentally and economically responsible approach to meeting hardware demands in the IT industry. 

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From Hawk to Hunter: Doubling Power, Cutting Energy, and Giving Tech a Second Life (HPE)