Managing Stakeholder Requirements in High Performance Computing Procurement

High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities are provided in the UK at a national level. These facilities are amongst the best in the world, supporting world class research across a spectrum of disciplines. EPSRC has led the procurement of the two current facilities: CSAR (Computing Services for Academic Research) which was implemented in 1998, and HPCx which was implemented in 2001. In this paper we consider the issues involved in HPC procurement and present recommendations for managing stakeholder requirements in future procurements of national HPC facilities. These recommendations are organised as a process, of which the top level is presented here. The process takes an iterative, ‘spiral’ approach affording rounds of eliciting, balancing and validating requirements. Previous procurements have been successful, but with the increasing costs of HPC, an increasing effort must be made to ensure that this remains so. Our focus here is on how stakeholders, particularly within the academic scientific community, can be better involved in the decision making processes and ultimately how procurement strategy can rigorously meet the demands of the potential users.