The vendor required to provide to deliver state-of-the-art AI resources and supporting software solutions aligned to the establishment of university institute for artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and the identified objectives of the university.
- Hardware and software needs:
• A combination of the latest generation GPUs and AI accelerator (AIA) nodes
• Approximately 400 GPUs (latest generation) and a similar number of AIAs
• Overall goal of computing power exceeding 30 PFLOPS
• Overall goal of related storage (approximately 15pb)
• A high-speed, redundant data fabric supporting within the cluster
• Software and ml models for different applications
• 24/7/365 support with a 4-hour onsite response time for physical equipment issues, and a 4- hour response time for cloud service incidents
• A three-year warranty with the option to extend for additional years, available for a minimum of two years.
- System modality:
• The proposal may include three different modes: on premise, cloud, and hybrid (a combination of on premise and cloud) solutions.
- Technical and programmatic support:
• Supplying the personnel to manage and operate the AI resource for university use on an ongoing basis.
• The AI resource as a managed service, ensuring stability, security, and performance on a 24/7 basis.
- Required features:
• Immediate cloud services scaled to meet current needs.
• The cloud services may be part of a longer-term hybrid environment based on service level needs throughout the life of the agreement
• Installation, system testing, and validation of multiple environments and multiple modalities
• Services architected with high availability in mind, ensuring maintenance of individual components without disrupting the continuity of the overall service
• Secure multi-enclave architecture: the proposed AI computing environment must be designed to support multiple, logically segregated security enclaves with distinct compliance profiles.
• Proposers must design and describe an environment that includes:
o General research enclave: an environment intended for standard academic and research workloads that do not require special regulatory protections
o Act enclave: an environment designed to support research involving protected health information (PHI) and to enable the university to meet its obligations under act and associated regulations.
o The enclave must support act compliance, including technical, administrative, and physical safeguards
o Federal compliance enclave: an environment designed to support workloads requiring compliance with federal data security frameworks, including at least NIST SP 800-171 and FISMA.
o The enclave must support implementation of the required controls, including boundary protections, logging and monitoring, incident response, and access controls
o Each enclave must be logically segregated (and physically segregated where appropriate) with clearly defined security boundaries, identity and access management, network segmentation, data storage, logging or monitoring, and backup or restore processes.
- Contract Period/Term: 1 year
- Pre-Proposal Conference Date: January 21, 2026
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: February 10, 2026
