May 14, 2018 — Following the announcement of the joint procurement process for innovative high-performance computing (HPC) systems last year, PPI4HPC has now published the contract notice specifying criteria which candidates must meet to participate in the competitive dialogue. In its role as lead procurer, GENCI initiated this new phase in the name of and on behalf of four leading European supercomputing centres, BSC, CINECA, Juelich Supercomputing Centre and GENCI. Each of these centres will act as public procurers for each of the four lots within this joint procurement.
“We encourage all HPC vendors and stakeholders to participate in this competitive dialogue. We have received good feedback from interested parties that have already come to our market consultation events, and this is the next stage of this new procurement process,” states Dirk Pleiter, PPI4HPC coordinator.
The process for a joint competitive dialogue will follow the steps shown in the image below:
Now that the contract notice has been published, any HPC vendor or stakeholder can ask to participate in the PPI4HPC competitive dialogue for a given lot by providing the information required in order to qualify. Qualified candidates will receive a tendering package with information about the relevant lots. Next, in the dialogue phase, all the candidates who meet the criteria will interact directly with the public procurers for each lot. The time to receive tenders or requests to participate is Monday 9 July at 12:00. At the end of each dialogue phase, the successful candidates will sign a contract which will be implemented in accordance with the national law for the specific lot.
About PPI4HPC
A group of leading European supercomputing centres decided to form a buyers’ group to execute a joint Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) for the first time in the area of high-performance computing (HPC). The co-funding by the European Commission (EC) will allow for a significant enhancement of the planned pre-exascale HPC infrastructure from 2019 and pave the way for future joint investments in Europe. The total investment planned will be about € 73 million. The HPC centres involved, – BSC, CEA/GENCI, CINECA and JUELICH- have a strong track record in providing supercomputing resources at European level.
Source: PPI4HPC