On 15 March, the Public Information Event (PIE) held in Barcelona gathered 13 HPC vendors as well as small and medium companies (SMEs) together with leading European HPC centres. The PIE's objetive was to consult the market and gather feedback about the expectations and plans of the partners, in preparation of a possible procurement of equipment and R&D services.
The ICEI project plans to deliver a set of e-infrastructure services that will be federated to form the Fenix Infrastructure. The distinguishing characteristic of this e-infrastructure is that data repositories and scalable supercomputing systems will be in close proximity and well integrated. First steps in this direction are planned to be realised in the context of the European Human Brain Project, which will be the initial prime user of this research infrastructure.
The event gave the different companies the opportunity to learn more about the process and the particular needs of each partner, as the tender will be specific for each one. The topics included an architecture overview, the infrastructure plans of each partner and the different R&D topics. All participants had the chance to ask questions and provide feedback about the process.
Following this initial meeting, the next step is to hold the Request for Information (RFI) event with HPC vendors and SMEs for the Fenix infrastructure. During these individual meetings, which will take place 26-27 April 2018 in Barcelona, vendors and ICEI partners will discuss each procurement in detail.
Interested vendors can express their interesting on the RFI meetings page.
