University of Alberta - Request for Proposal - PAICE - COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE

The PAICE project, led by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC), CIFAR, three AI institutes (Amii, Mila, and the Vector Institute) and their host site partners (respectively, the University of Alberta, University of Laval, and University of Toronto), will acquire and support three dedicated computing systems for AI research. The $65M total funding will provide and operate computing capacity for researchers at Amii, Mila, and the Vector Institute, increasing available specialized computing capacity and related services. Equipment to meet site-specific constraints and national standards, including cybersecurity policies. The west regional PAICE project is expected to spend a total of $21.5M including operations and facilities, led by the University of Alberta and Amii, and is expected to make two procurements separated by one or two years. The first west regional procurement is split into two phases: a Supply Chain Risk Assessment phase and then a Proposal Evaluation phase. Given the context of abnormally long procurement delivery times common in 2023, shorter delivery times may be given consideration when being scored in the evaluation of proposals in that criteria category under the expectation that delivery should not take longer than 6 months unless indicated in the category components below.