JARVIS AI inference platform acquisition and maintenance

LOT-0001

JARVIS Eine zentrale Plattform für KI Inferenz • Acquisition of AI inference IT equipment including hardware and mandatory software. • Rack infrastructure, including power distribution units (PDU) and cooling distribution units (CDU) optimized for the offered IT equipment. • Delivery and installation services. • Hardware and software maintenance and support services for five (5) years.

Within the context of the installation and operation of the “JU Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research” (JUPITER) supercomputer and the “JUPITER AI Factory” (JAIF), the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) at Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) envisions to extend the existing Exascale infrastructure, which targets massive scale HPC simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) training, with experimental hardware and software focusing on AI inference workloads. The “JUPITER Advanced Research Vehicle for Inference Services” (JARVIS) is tightly integrated with JUPITER and will allow to experiment with hardware and software for AI inference, to support the competitiveness of current and future AI workloads in Europe and to support sovereignty. With this procurement, JSC targets to purchase a heterogeneous system that must be integrated into an existing cloud infrastructure. The system shall provide multiple different purpose optimized components, e.g. • addressing the loading and querying of frontier AI models in a large tightly coupled compute pod with high-speed low-latency interconnect, • providing resources ensuring Confidential Computing (CC), • using an Ethernet compatible interconnect between the different nodes/partitions of the system, • fostering European technology and supply chains, wherever possible[ET1.1]. The system acts as a pilot to experiment with hardware as well as software and operational modes to offer customers an interface to AI inference as well as other AI workloads.