As the owner of the national e-infrastructure, Sigma2 bears a vital strategic responsibility for systems and services, overseeing the complex landscape of large-scale data and computational science.
One of our key objectives is to strongly emphasis procuring new HPC and storage equipment. We are also engaged in development projects aimed at enhancing the national services.
Our current strategy involves a dual-track HPC system service, wherein a new system is installed every second year, with each system expected to have a four-year operational lifetime.
It's important to note that the procurements listed below adhere to Norwegian public sector procurement laws.
Ongoing projects
Procurement: The next supercomputer
The procurement of the next national supercomputer (HPC system), currently operating under the working name A2, is in progress.
Development: New data research archive
This development project aims to design and develop Sigma2`s next-next generation Research Data Archive.
Completed projects
Procurement: New national storage system (NIRD)
The project to procure the next generation Norwegian Infrastructure for Research Data (NIRD) was completed in 2022.
Procurement: Data centre facilities
The project to procure data centre facilities to host the national e-infrastrucutre was completed in 2021.
Procurement project: Two new HPC systems (ANS 2018)
Two separate competitions were conducted, resulting in national supercomputers Betzy (2020) and Saga (2019).
Both systems are installed at NTNU in Trondheim.
Procurement project: One new HPC system and a storage facility (ANS 2016)
The national supercomputer FRAM and the national storage system NIRD were procured in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Fram is located in Tromsø, and the first-generation NIRD was located at two locations; Tromsø and Trondheim.