Supercomputers are very complex assemblies of hardware and software components. One does not simply buy a specific number of cabinets from a vendor and be done with the supercomputer procurement. All systems are tailored to specific requirements and are thus unique.
Most of the users who have access to a supercomputer are not familiar with the procedure of acquiring one. It is a procedure that takes months and requires a team effort of many people from various fields. The need to have a budget, understand what the users need, know the most important applications and their characteristics and usage patterns, have a strategic vision, benchmark new technologies, discuss with the vendors, understand and follow the procurement law, and so on.
TODO (EDUKAMU team): Requirements presented as a list or using other suitable format
A computing center needs a supercomputer based on its specific needs, as the users and applications they run are different. Thus, a vendor should provide a hardware and software solution that matches these needs as closely as possible. For example, an organization may need only CPUs, while another one wants to complement the CPUs with GPUs. Additionally, application performance typically depends on the speed of the interconnect, thus someone would need to invest more money to improve the communication performance between the nodes. The processor performance, the amount and speed of memory, and the storage characteristics can be adjusted, and so on. Thus, every solution is truly unique according to what the customer wants.
To assess the performance of different solutions quantitatively, vendors are typically required to provide performance commitments for a collection of applications, which represents and reflects the expected usage of the upcoming system. An interesting characteristic of supercomputer procurements is the fact that computing centers buy technology that is only going to be available later, sometimes even after a few years. This is due to the rapid development of the technology and the time it takes to run a procurement and to build, install and commission a large-scale system. It does not make sense to buy a system that is obsolete on the day it is opened for users.
Hence, the vendors participating a procurement need to be able to predict the performance of a system that does not yet exist. In the best case, the vendor may have some early engineering samples of the processors and other components but typically, the benchmark applications are analyzed very carefully, and then advanced models are used to provide the needed performance commitments.
For the vendors to be able to design and propose solutions, a request for proposals (RFP) is prepared with all relevant details and requirements. It is also possible to ask for more information through a request for information (RFI). Then the qualified vendors are invited to submit proposals. In the proposals, the vendors present their solutions in great detail, including performance projections for the benchmarks. The proposals are evaluated carefully based on how they meet the requirements of the RFP. Typically, the most important decision criterion is some kind of a price performance metric based on the benchmark commitments and the price and operating costs of the system.