Greetings GT community,
PACE is in the midst of our annual competitive vendor selection process. As outlined on the “Policy” page of our web site, we have issued a set of documents to various state contract vendors. This time around we have Dell, HP, IBM and Penguin Computing. Contained within these documents are general specifications based on the computing demand we are anticipating coming from the faculty over the next year. I’ve included a link to the documents (GT login required) below. Please bear in mind that these specs are not intended to limit configurations you may wish to purchase, but rather to normalize vendor responses and help us choose a vendor for the next year.
The document I’m sure you will be most interested in is a timeline. The overall timeline has not been published to the vendors, and I would appreciate if it was kept confidential. The first milestone, which obviously has been published, is that responses are due to us by 5:00pm today. The next step is for us to evaluate those responses. If any of you are interested in commenting on those responses, please let me know. Your feedback is appreciated.
Please watch this blog, as we will post updates as we move through the process. We already have a number of people interested in a near-term purchase. If you are as well, or you know somebody who is, now is the time to get the process started. Please contact me at your convenience.
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Neil Bright
Chief HPC Architect
neil.bright@oit.gatech.edu