EOI - Supply, Installation and Maintenance of High Performance Computer (HPC) Equipment

⁠⁠⁠Swinburne University of Technology is a world-ranked university leading the way in innovation, industry engagement and social inclusion. In recent years, Swinburne has progressed to become one of the world’s leading universities, ranking in the top 400 universities in the world, as assessed by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and in the top 100 in the world in physics.

Swinburne has a strong reputation in Australia and overseas as a provider of career orientated education. Teaching and learning enhancement is a strategic priority for the University, and Swinburne is committed to the transfer of lifelong learning skills. A feature of many Swinburne undergraduate courses is the applied vocational emphasis and direct industry application. This theme continues with the introduction of our new four-year Professional degrees which include a full year of guaranteed work placement.

Swinburne aims to be a leading university in science, technology and innovation, conducting research that transforms industries, shapes lives and communities. This drives the Swinburne 2020 vision. To facilitate this vision the University is currently establishing five Swinburne Research Institutes that will work at the frontiers of research and innovation in key focus areas. The Institutes will draw on research capability within Research Centres and more broadly across the University. A prime objective is to provide researchers with access to the best possible research infrastructure in focus areas both on-campus and through partnerships. As well as astronomy and physics, other areas of research strength and capacity at Swinburne include engineering, materials science, information technology, design, neuroscience and social sciences.

The supercomputing program at Swinburne is managed within the Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing (CAS) which was founded in 1998 and has grown to comprise over 80 staff and students. CAS is a major contributor to Swinburne’s ranking in the top 100 in Physics research in the world and CAS has consistently scored the highest possible rank of “above world standard” in Australia’s research excellence ratings. The new institutes model at Swinburne will feature the Swinburne Data Science Research Institute, with CAS and the supercomputing program being major contributors to this institute.

CAS has been designing supercomputers since 1998 culminating in the current g2 machine that incorporates the GPU Supercomputer for Theoretical Astrophysics Research (gSTAR) - a national facility for astronomers provided in cooperation with Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL).

Installed in 2011/12, g2 comprises ~2,000 Intel CPU-cores, ~200 NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, a 3PB lustre filesystem and a non-blocking QDR infiniband interconnect. It also hosts Swinburne-led national data science development projects such as the gSTAR Data Management and Collaboration Platform (gDMCP) and the Theoretical Astrophysics Observatory (TAO) funded through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS) and the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) project.

Swinburne intends to replace the current University supercomputer with a new high performance computing (HPC) environment that will continue to keep Swinburne as a leader in academic supercomputing while meeting the research needs of staff and students. It is expected that the new hardware will further enhance our established reputation for utilising hybrid technology to boost research performance.