In the procurement of HPC clusters the owner-to-be wants to be sure to get the maximum performance for his budget. Unfortunately, maximum performance is not easily measured. You could maximize Flops performance, but then there is the question how your applications will perform? And how about storage? Also you need to decide how much degrees of freedom you allow in the answers: If you are too prescriptive suppliers cannot suggest creative new solutions, if you have to few guidelines the offers will not really be comparable. In this talk we will look at the different aspects on how to set up your procurement process. |