Article 8 Hosting entity
United Kingdom
Supercomputers shall be located in a Participating State that is a Member State. A Participating State shall not host more than one pre-exascale supercomputer or one petascale supercomputer.
The hosting entity may represent one Participating State that is a Member State or a hosting consortium. The hosting entity and the competent authorities of the Participating State or Participating States in a hosting consortium shall enter into an agreement to this effect.
The Joint Undertaking shall entrust to a hosting entity the operation of each individual pre-exascale supercomputer it owns in accordance with Article 10.
The Joint Undertaking and the other co-owners shall entrust to a hosting entity the operation of each individual petascale supercomputer they own in accordance with Article 11.
Hosting entities for pre-exascale and petascale supercomputers shall be selected in accordance with paragraph 5 of this Article and the Joint Undertaking's financial rules referred to in Article 15.
Following a call for expression of interest, the hosting entity and the corresponding Participating State where the hosting entity is established or the corresponding hosting consortium shall be selected by the Governing Board through a fair and transparent process based, inter alia, on the following criteria:
compliance with the general system specifications defined in the call for expression of interest;
total cost of ownership of the supercomputer;
experience of the hosting entity in installing and operating similar systems;
quality of the hosting facility's physical and IT infrastructure, its security and its connectivity with the rest of the Union;
quality of service to the users, namely capability to comply with the service level agreement provided among the documents accompanying the selection procedure;
prior acceptance by the hosting entity of the terms and conditions set out in the model hosting agreement as referred to in point (o) of Article 7(3) of the Statutes, including in particular the elements set out in Article 9(2) and those defined in the selection procedure;
provision of an appropriate supporting document proving the commitment of the Member State where the hosting entity is established or of the competent authorities of the Participating States of the hosting consortium to cover the share of the total cost of ownership of the pre-exascale supercomputer that is not covered by the Union contribution as set out in Article 4 or any other Union contribution as set out in Article 5, either until its ownership is transferred by the Joint Undertaking to that hosting entity or until the supercomputer is sold or decommissioned in case there is no transfer of ownership;
provision of an appropriate supporting document proving the commitment of the Member State where the hosting entity is established or of the competent authorities of the Participating States in the hosting consortium to cover all the costs of the total cost of ownership of the petascale supercomputer that are not covered by the Union contribution as set out in Article 4 or any other Union contribution as set out in Article 5.
After the selection of the hosting entity, the Participating State where the selected hosting entity is established or the corresponding hosting consortium may decide to invite additional Participating States to join it. The commitment of the joining Participating States shall represent a marginal fraction of the total cost of ownership of the pre-exascale supercomputer until its ownership is transferred by the Joint Undertaking to that hosting entity.