Published date: 26 January 2022

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Closing: 24 February 2022, 3pm

Contract summary

Industry

  • Office and computing machinery, equipment and supplies except furniture and software packages - 30000000

  • IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support - 72000000

Location of contract

TW11 0LW

Value of contract

£0 to £200,000

Procurement reference

tender_297108/1036145

Published date

26 January 2022

Closing date

24 February 2022

Closing time

3pm

Contract start date

24 March 2022

Contract end date

1 September 2025

Contract type

Supply contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (below threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

The requirement of the National Physical Laboratory [NPL] is a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster to perform numerical simulations in the area of quantum technologies. This involves the emulation of noisy quantum computers, multi-scale device simulations, and automation of quantum technologies using machine learning (ML). Example software that will run on this HPC cluster includes quantum computing emulators (such as QuEST, Qiskit, Qulacs), machine learning software (such as PyTorch, TensorFlow), and materials modelling software (such as quantum espresso, questaal, siesta). This HPC cluster therefore needs to be able to run a wide range of open source and proprietary applications, and provide a parallel development and runtime environment for software built locally. The development languages to be used in include Fortran, C, C++, Python and Cuda.

To these aims the HPC cluster needs to include a combination of nodes without and nodes with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) accelerator cards, with high-speed network connections between nodes. The solution is to include fully functioning installation at an appropriate facility in a dedicated computer room, to be provided by NPL. The detailed requirements are specified in Section 5, and include showing all cabinets, ethernet networking, PDUS, operating system etc required to build a complete solution, given that the NPL will be providing space, power, cooling, connection to the network infrastructure and remote console access to the head-node.

More information

Links

Additional text

The Authority is using the LUPC Bravo e-Procurement portal to conduct the procurement process.

All Suppliers must register their company via the LUPC Bravo Portal. This can be done via the following link https://lupc.bravosolution.co.uk/web/login.shtm

About the buyer

Contact name

Bronwyn

Address

Hampton road
Teddington
TW11 0LW
England

Email

bronwyn.glossop@npl.co.uk