Procurement of a High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF)

Description du marché

ECMWF acquired its existing high-performance computing resources under an agreement that is scheduled to expire at the end of October 2027. The final configuration delivered under this agreement comprises four Eviden BullSequana XH2000 systems, each with 1920 application nodes based around two socket 64 core AMD Rome processors, about 450 further nodes for pre/post-processing and login services, as well as 10 Lustre filesystems. ECMWF has an option for an extension of the current contract on a monthly or quarterly basis, which can be used to provide flexibility in the start of the operational service period for the replacement HPCF being procured as part of this ITT. The new HPCF is intended to meet ECMWF’s high performance computing requirements in two areas. Firstly, it should provide a highly-available computational backbone for ECMWF’s time-sensitive numerical weather prediction using both physics-based and data-driven models. Secondly, it should provide resources specifically optimised for the training of machine learning models. The highly-available production service for machine learning inference, physics-based modelling and data assimilation applications should be met by the phased installation during 2027 and 2028 of several new HPC clusters in the ECMWF Data Centre in Bologna and will run in parallel with the existing HPCF until the end of the current HPCF contract. Data driven modelling is a rapidly growing part of ECMWF’s strategy, so in addition to the on-premises resources for prediction using both physics and data-driven models, ECMWF seeks to procure supplementary resources specifically optimised for the training of machine learning models. These resources may be provisioned on-premises at the Bologna facility, hosted in a remote data centre, or delivered via public cloud environments. Benchmarks using ECMWF IFS and AIFS codes will be a key part of the evaluation of systems bid in response to this ITT. Tenderers need a licence to get access to ECMWF's Benchmarks. Please refer to section 3.4 of Volume I of the ITT for further instructions on how to access the Benchmarks.

Pouvoir adjudicateur