Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-02-26
Buyer: King's College London
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 72900000
Estimated value: 810000 GBP
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες σχετιζόμενες με εφεδρικούς ηλεκτρονικούς υπολογιστές και υπηρεσίες μετατροπής καταλόγων ηλεκτρονικών υπολογιστών
Artificial Intelligence (AI) highly optimised software package and storage to fulfill an industry partnership with Nvidia to support a Research Grant from Innovate UK to build a Centre for Artificial Intelligence. A project prerequisite was to involve and industry partner that will contribute to the initiative as well with additional funding. The industry partner has consequently engaged in a deal registration with a mandated reseller channel capable of providing the needed expertise and specialised tier of service as the only possible realisation route to the requirement fulfilment. The requirement consist of specific to Nvidia software stack highly optimised to be utilised for memory sharing across multiple GPUs, allowing for larger AI models to be run, considered to be unprecedented on the market.
— 500TB NetApp Hybrid Storage Server (King's use) + 4 x 144TB storage for each NHS site = 1076TB in total,
— data scientist consultancy — help and advice with all frameworks, algorithms and interpretation of your deep learning and AI results,
— infrastructure engineer consultancy — help in hardware configuration or software (Linux) set up of your deep learning environment,
— security consultancy — help with the security and regulatory compliance aspects of your deep learning project,
— project consultancy — ongoing support for longer term projects that may encompass skills sets from all of the above areas,
— the software packages used for Artificial Intelligence applications have been very highly optimised for Nvidia hardware. Other solutions have been explored but have not been considered to have a complete software stack to be regarded as a competitive product,
— given the requirement of Nvidia hardware, Nvidia DGX machines are necessary warranted as they provide unique software methods for memory sharing across multiple GPUs, allowing for larger AI models to be run. This large model support, when combined with the computational performance, is a strict requirement of AI workloads in the medical imaging domain.
— NetApp FAS2700, together with the ONTAP AI optimisation stack, provides optimum read/write storage throughput to enable the utilisation of DGX hardware to its fullest capability, allows for large enough store necessary for medical data, and is within the available budget (due to deal registration),
— NetApp FAS2700 hybrid storage arrays are built to deliver robust capabilities, supports the broadest possible set of IT needs. Flash Cache™ intelligent data caching — based on NVMe technology — is integrated into all FAS2700 models to accelerate workloads, reduce latency and deliver 30 % or more performance compared to the previous FAS2600 generation. With NetApp FlexGroup, you can support large NAS environments in a single namespace that can scale up to 20PB and 400 000 000 000 files providing consistent high performance and resiliency,
— NetApp is known for its superior storage efficiency technologies such as in line de-duplication, in line compaction, thin provisioning and enhanced in line compression — that deliver efficiency and storage savings without compromising performance,
— NetApp ONTAP includes expanded enterprise-class data management capabilities such as Non-Disruptive Operations (NDO), Quality of Service (QoS) and superior virtualization integration, enabling access to advanced enterprise features that are usually only in high-end systems.
— other sources of Nvidia hardware vendors have been considered, both nationally or internationally. Other national sources are not certified to sell or install Nvidia DGX2 systems, while international sources that could in theory sell and install Nvidia DGX2 systems are not able to support the hardware due to the lack of a local operational workforce,
— NetApp storage needs to be integrated and optimised for the Nvidia DGX hardware, requiring a single vendor to ensure full support and liability,


Winner: Scan Systems
Award value: 810000