ACQUISITION, DELIVERY, INSTALLATION AND HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE OF INNOVATE INDUSTRIAL GRADE SUPERCOMPUTER – FOR THE EUROPEAN HIGH PERFORMAN...

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking has launched an open public procurement (EUROHPC/2026/OP/0010) to acquire, deliver, install, integrate and maintain an industrial-grade high performance computing system for the INNOVATE project to be hosted at CINECA DAMA Technopole in Bologna. The required integrated solution covers compute partitions and GPUs, networking and a High Performance AI Fabric, direct liquid cooling, a full-flash data lake with at least 2.2 PB usable capacity, OpenStack and Kubernetes orchestration, firewall and management platforms, acceptance testing and a multi-year maintenance service for a maximum contract duration of 68 months. The estimated total contract value is €11,615,385, award will follow the best price-quality ratio, and tenders must be submitted electronically via the Funding and Tenders Portal by 25 November 2026 at 16:00 Europe/Luxembourg with questions due by 17 November 2026. The opportunity is aimed at major HPC system integrators or consortia and requires strict compliance with mandatory technical requirements and verifiable performance benchmarks, where non-compliance may lead to rejection.

Quick summary

Essential facts

Procurement (open tender) by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) for the INNOVATE industrial-grade HPC system to be hosted and operated by CINECA at the DAMA Technopole (Bologna). Scope covers supply, delivery, installation, and hardware and software maintenance; includes compute partitions, datalake, interconnects, management systems and firewall/border equipment.

Footnotes

1. 1Procurement documents, invitation to tender, tender specifications and draft contract are published on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal: INNOVATE Tender.

Opportunity snapshot

This is an open public procurement launched by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) for the acquisition, delivery, installation and hardware and software maintenance of the INNOVATE industrial-grade supercomputer to be hosted and operated by CINECA at the DAMA Technopole in Bologna, Italy. The procurement covers supply of the full system (compute partitions, interconnects, storage/datalake, management and service partitions, border firewall and management platform), delivery, installation, acceptance, knowledge transfer/training and a multi-year maintenance and support period (maintenance for 60 months is anticipated).

Who may apply and funding modality

This is a procurement (tender) rather than a grant program. The contracting authority procures supplies and services from economic operators through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal eSubmission system. The procurement is open to economic operators subject to the rules on access to procurement; registration in the Participant Register (PIC) and an EU Login account are required for electronic submission.

What the tender buys (technical scope and deliverables)

The INNOVATE procurement requests an industrial-grade, integrated HPC/AI/Cloud platform including multiple compute partitions (Scale-out AI/HPC, Cloud Data Driven & Visualization, Cloud Application), management partitions (Master, Service), a full-flash data lake with minimum usable capacity and performance commitments, a Core Ethernet Fabric and a High-Performance AI Fabric, management network, direct liquid cooling deployment, border firewall instance and on-premises firewall management platform, and all services for delivery, installation, commissioning, acceptance, knowledge transfer/training and hardware & software maintenance over the contract period.

Technical evaluation and award

The award is based on best price-quality ratio. The tender evaluation combines four criteria with the stated weights and scoring formulas in the technical response template: Technical value of the system design (30 points), Cost Performance Analysis (CPA) based on performance and TCO (35 points), Quality of services (20 points), and EU added value (15 points). The tender must address Mandatory Requirements (MRQ) and Targeted Requirements (TRQ) in the Technical Specifications; failure to satisfy MRQs leads to rejection.

Application process and templates

Tenders must be submitted electronically only through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal eSubmission system (EU Login required). All mandatory forms and templates are published as procurement documents on the Portal: Invitation to Tender, Draft Contract, Tender Specifications (Technical and Administrative Parts), Response Template (technical response Annex 7), Financial Offer form (Annex 6 - Excel), and Draft Contract. Identified subcontractors and commitment letters models are provided in Administrative annexes. Evidence and supporting documents are to be uploaded per the Annex 1 checklist in the Administrative Part. Failure to submit required documents with the tender may lead to rejection.

Commercial & contractual key points

Procurement is by direct contract with EuroHPC JU; ICSC represents the consortium of private partners and co-ownership arrangements are established by the Regulation and draft contract. The estimated overall contract amount is €11,615,385. The tender requires performance guarantees. Pre-financing (example 30% in draft contract) is conditional upon provision of a bank pre-financing guarantee. Payments are split between EuroHPC JU and consortium partners as specified in the invitation and draft contract; invoices to EuroHPC JU are VAT-exempt where applicable; invoicing procedures and addresses are specified in the draft contract. Contract duration is up to 68 months; maintenance is foreseen for 60 months after acceptance of the system.

Submission practicalities and evaluation logistics

Tenders must be submitted before the deadline (25/11/2026 16:00 Europe/Luxembourg). Questions during the submission phase must be submitted through the Portal Q&A facility; contracting authority is not bound to respond to questions received less than six working days before the deadline. Public Q&A may be published on the Portal. The opening session is virtual and limited to verification and announcement of tenderers. Tenders become the property of the contracting authority and are treated confidentially.

Key technical and commercial risks tenderers should manage

All technical requirements, mandatory and targeted items, scoring principles and templates are contained in the published Tender Specifications (Part 1 Administrative, Part 2 Technical), Annex 7 Response Template and Annex 6 Financial Offer spreadsheet. Tenderers should download and use those exact forms and answer MRQs/TRQs explicitly (Y/N) and provide requested tables A and B, CPA committed values, benchmark evidence and the project plan.

Summary assessment and recommendations for prospective bidders

This is a high-value, technically demanding industrial HPC procurement requiring an integrated hardware and software solution with strong system management, monitoring and automated maintenance capabilities. Competitive bids must demonstrate full compliance with Mandatory Requirements, present a strong technical design (per-partition details, interconnect, datalake and management architecture), produce robust and reproducible CPA benchmark evidence, propose realistic installation and acceptance plans and provide credible maintenance and support arrangements. The tender documents are prescriptive on network, cooling, GPU and storage requirements; deviations from MRQs risk tender rejection. Use the Response Template (Annex 7) and Annex 6 Financial Offer form, follow the administrative checklist (Annex 1) and ensure PIC registration and eSubmission readiness well ahead of the deadline.

Footnotes

1. 1The official tender page, procurement documents and eSubmission forms are available on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal: ec.europa.eu. Tenderers must use eSubmission for all submissions and submit questions via the Portal Q&A tool.

Opportunity overview

This is a public procurement tender, not a grant scheme. The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking is seeking one supplier or consortium to acquire, deliver, install, integrate and maintain an industrial grade high performance computing system for the INNOVATE project. The system will provide computing, artificial intelligence, cloud and data processing services for European industry. It will be hosted and operated by CINECA at the DAMA Technopole in Bologna, Italy.

The procurement covers the complete integrated infrastructure, including compute partitions, GPU systems, networks, storage, data lake, firewalling, cloud and container orchestration platforms, system software, installation, acceptance, professional support, hardware replacement, software support and maintenance.

The authoritative portal record and tender documents should be treated as controlling in the event of any discrepancy between summary metadata and the detailed procurement documents 1.

Core procurement facts

What is being purchased

The successful tenderer must provide a fully operational industrial HPC platform rather than isolated hardware components. The proposed solution must be designed, supplied, installed, configured, tested and accepted as an integrated system within CINECA’s existing infrastructure.

The principal system elements are as follows:

Technical requirements and mandatory compliance

The tender uses mandatory requirements, targeted requirements, data centre specifications and documentation requirements. Mandatory requirements must be met. Failure to comply with mandatory requirements can lead to rejection of the tender, while targeted requirements generally contribute to the score without automatically causing rejection if not offered.

The system must support a maximum full partition reboot time of 60 minutes, integrated cluster management, automated node provisioning, hardware and software health monitoring, automated fault recovery, rolling updates, centralized event logging, near real time power measurement and high availability management services.

The infrastructure must include separate networking functions for storage and services, AI and HPC traffic, management traffic and connections to the CINECA backbone. Required capabilities include high speed Ethernet or InfiniBand technologies, redundant links, lossless or congestion controlled traffic, RDMA support, telemetry, BGP, EVPN, VXLAN, VLAN, link aggregation and redundant hot swappable power supplies.

The scale out AI and HPC partition must use direct liquid cooling capable of dissipating at least 65 percent of total system TDP through the liquid cooling loop. A 90 percent cooling split is a targeted improvement and contributes additional points.

Each scale out AI and HPC GPU must provide at least 140 GB of high bandwidth memory, support AI mixed precision operations and scientific FP64 computation, and use an integrated module form factor such as NVIDIA SXM, OAM or an equivalent technology. Each installed GPU must have at least 128 GB of system memory allocated per GPU.

The data lake must provide sustained read throughput of at least 90 GB per second, normal write throughput of at least 12 GB per second and peak checkpoint write throughput of at least 30 GB per second for at least 15 minutes. It must provide high availability, automated recovery, a parallel file system or equivalent, POSIX access, LDAP integration, multi tenancy, S3 compatibility, encryption, immutable snapshots, audit logging and quality of service controls.

The software environment must support OpenStack in high availability mode and a Kubernetes based platform for CPU and GPU workloads. Required capabilities include GPU aware scheduling, quotas, namespace isolation, RBAC, LDAP or Keycloak integration, container execution, OCI compatibility, common AI frameworks, distributed training frameworks, performance profiling, optimized numerical libraries and parallel debugging.

Eligibility and potential tenderers

The open procedure permits interested economic operators to submit a tender, subject to the exclusion, selection, technical and administrative requirements contained in the invitation and tender specifications. The opportunity is suitable for a major HPC system integrator, infrastructure manufacturer, storage and networking supplier acting as prime contractor, or a consortium able to assume overall responsibility for the complete solution.

Consortia are expressly contemplated by the technical response template, which requests information on the coordinator or applicant and partners where relevant. A consortium should allocate clear responsibility for system architecture, hardware supply, software licensing, data centre integration, installation, acceptance testing, support and long term maintenance.

A valid Participant Identification Code is required for an organisation submitting a tender or participating as a consortium member. Tenderers should verify or obtain their PIC early and ensure that the organisation data, legal status and authorised representatives are correct in the Participant Register.

The procurement record does not state a grant style geographical eligibility list, funding rate, maximum reimbursement rate or co financing requirement. Tenderers participate as economic operators competing for a public contract and must submit a priced offer, not a funding application.

Financial conditions

The estimated total contract value is €11,615,385. This is the estimated procurement value and not a fixed grant amount or guaranteed payment to every applicant. Only the successful tenderer or successful tenderers under the final award decision will receive a contract.

The tender documents include a dedicated financial offer form. Tenderers should price the complete scope, including hardware, software, licences, installation, cabling, transceivers, integration, acceptance support, professional services, training or knowledge transfer where required, warranty, replacement of components, maintenance and support.

No funding rate is specified because this is a supply procurement. The economic offer must be assessed together with technical quality, service quality and EU added value. Pricing should therefore be structured so that all required lifecycle costs are transparent and consistent with the committed technical performance.

Award criteria

Technical value is assessed against the mandatory and targeted hardware and software requirements. Improvements above the minimum requirements can receive additional points, with quantitative improvements generally normalized against the best admissible offer.

Cost performance analysis covers the relationship between AI performance, power consumption and cooling performance, together with application benchmark performance. Tenderers must provide committed values for the offered GPU system, power use, liquid cooling split and benchmark results. Committed results may be verified during acceptance.

Quality of services covers installation and project planning, maintenance and support, professional support and risk management. The response template indicates that the quality of services section should describe the project plan, service levels, call centre arrangements, knowledge transfer, professional support days and risk mitigation.

EU added value assesses how the offer contributes to European digital technology supply chains, integration of European technologies, links between publicly funded research and industrial delivery, leadership class supercomputing and the development of a European exascale ecosystem.

Contract duration and delivery implications

The maximum contract duration is 68 months. The contract is therefore expected to combine an initial delivery and implementation period with acceptance, operational support, hardware and software maintenance and related lifecycle services.

Tenderers should provide a credible phased implementation plan covering design confirmation, manufacturing and logistics, data centre preparation, delivery, physical installation, cabling, network integration, software deployment, configuration, testing, benchmarking, acceptance and transition to production.

The proposal should identify dependencies on CINECA, including access to the DAMA Technopole, data centre power and cooling interfaces, backbone connectivity, existing network equipment, LDAP services, security policies, acceptance resources and operational handover arrangements.

Submission requirements

Tenders must be submitted electronically using the submission address available in the Funding and Tenders Portal. An EU Login account is required for electronic submission. A PIC is required for the participating organisation or consortium members.

The published procurement package includes the invitation letter, technical specifications, administrative and award criteria specifications, technical response template, financial offer form and draft contract. Tenderers should complete the prescribed templates and follow the document hierarchy and response instructions in the official package.

The eSubmission system accepts individual attachments subject to the applicable system requirements. The published portal guidance indicates that attachments must be below 50 MB each and that up to 200 files may be uploaded. Tenderers should not wait until the deadline to upload large technical files and should retain the electronic submission receipt.

The contracting authority is not bound to reply to questions submitted after the question deadline. Questions should therefore be submitted through the portal sufficiently early to allow clarification and incorporation of any answers into the final tender.

Recommended bid preparation approach

Key risks for applicants

Overall assessment

This is a technically demanding, high value EuroHPC procurement for an integrated industrial supercomputer and associated operational ecosystem. It is most relevant to established HPC manufacturers, system integrators, cloud and AI infrastructure providers, storage and networking specialists, cybersecurity suppliers and consortiums capable of providing a complete lifecycle solution.

The principal competitive differentiators are likely to be demonstrable compliance with the mandatory architecture, measurable AI and HPC performance per unit of cost and power, reliable delivery and maintenance planning, quality of professional support, and credible contribution to European technology supply chains. Applicants should treat the tender specifications, financial response form, technical response template and draft contract as a single integrated bid package.

Official source

The Funding and Tenders Portal tender record, including the official procurement documents and submission functions, is available at INNOVATE tender record.

Footnotes

1. 1The report is based on the official Funding and Tenders Portal record and the published tender material supplied for this opportunity. The official portal documents and any corrigenda take precedence over summary metadata, extracted text, search results or earlier date fields.