Modification description: Please send responses to
[email protected] instead of
[email protected] by COB March 23, 2007. ************************************************* The General Services Administration, Federal Acquisition Service (GSA-FAS), on behalf of the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), is issuing this notice to inform industry that an initial Request For Quotation (Phase I), for the Technology Insertion FY08 (TI-08) will be issued on or about April 20, 2007. Issuance of a final RFQ (Phase II) is anticipated on or about September 24, 2007. Phase I of the RFQ will be issued primarily to determine general pricing, performance (via a set of DoD Benchmarks) and related HPC functional capabilities for HPC systems that are deliverable on or before July 2008. Phase II of the RFQ will request offerors to provided detailed pricing, configuration, performance (via a set of DoD Benchmarks), maintenance, and delivery information for one or more specific HPC system configurations to significantly improve the DoDs HPC capability and capacity. The application benchmark codes that are anticipated to be included in the TI-08 application benchmark suite are recognized by the following names: CTH, HYCOM, GAMESS, AVUS and OOCORE. Benchmarks that can optionally be executed and submitted as supplemental information to Government predicted performance estimates include ICEPIC, LAMMPS, Overflow-2, WRF and AMR. See a related FedBizOpps announcement for an invitation to a March 1, 2007 information-exchange workshop to discuss the methods the Government intends to use for Government predicted benchmark performance. Responses to the RFQ will only be considered from original equipment manufacturers who: (1) have offerings obtainable via existing GSA Contracts under Schedule 70 General Purpose Commercial Information Technology Equipment, Software, Services; (2) have demonstrated the sustainment of a commercially available HPC systems product line with success in large scale manufacturing, deployment and maintenance of commercially available, production HPC systems; and (3) have clearances allowing access to sensitive DoD technology and facilities. Furthermore, the Government financial appropriations associated with this acquisition do not permit the purchase of any supercomputer which is not manufactured in the United States. Interested vendors are required to submit a NTE 10 page paper providing evidence of their ability to meet the above requirements to Ms. April OConnor at
[email protected] by COB March 23, 2007. In cases where the vendor is acquiring substantial portions of a potentially offered system from third party suppliers, please be specific in justifying your role as an OEM with a sustainable HPC product line versus, for example; a reseller, an assembler or an integrator of HPC systems. An evaluation of the information submitted will be conducted and letters of eligibility will be distributed to qualified vendors by April 13, 2007. An information briefing will be offered to pre-qualified vendors. The briefing is currently scheduled for the morning of May 3, 2007 beginning at 9:00AM EDT and will be followed by vendor-specific, one-on-one information exchange meetings and question and answer sessions individually scheduled for the afternoon of May 3 and, as needed, on May 4 to host all qualified vendors. Each vendor will be allowed 30 minutes for their May 3 or May 4 one-on-one session. For more details about the HPCM Program visit the website at www.hpcmo.hpc.mil. Questions can be submitted to GSA at any time during the RFQ process.