THIS AMENDMENT IS ISSUED TO REFLECT CHANGES IN THE TIMELINE FOR THE TI-05 PHASE I RFQ AND SUBSEQUENT VENDOR BRIEFINGS, ETC. Description: The General Services Administration, Federal Technology Service (GSA-FTS), on behalf of the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), is issuing this notice to inform industry that an initial RFQ (Phase I), for the Technology Insertion FY05 (TI-05) will be issued on or about June 18, 2004, with a subsequent two-day information briefing on or about July 1, 2004. The information briefing will include a general overview on the afternoon of July 1, beginning at 2:00 p.m. EDT, followed by vendor-specific, one-on-one information exchange meeting and question and answer sessions individually scheduled all day July 2. Each vendor will be allowed 30 minutes for the July 2 session. Vendors are requested to submit any questions regarding the RFQ in writing by 12 noon, CDT, June 28, 2004. These questions will be addressed in the public briefing on July 1, 2004, however in order to ensure anonymity, we will not disclose vendor names associated with the questions. A final RFQ (Phase II), is anticipated on or about October 15, 2004. Phase I of the RFQ will be issued primarily to establish general pricing and related HPC technical capabilities that are deliverable on or before June 30, 2005. Phase II of the RFQ will request offerors to provided detailed pricing, configuration, performance, maintenance, and delivery information for one or more specific HPC system configurations, all in response to a suite of DoD Benchmarks designed to demonstrate the capability of proposed systems to significantly improve the capabilities at HPCMP’s Major Shared Resource Centers and Distributed Centers. The application benchmark codes that are anticipated to be included in the TI-05 application benchmark suite are recognized by the following names: Aero, GAMESS, Cobalt60, RFCTH, HYCOM, OOCore, Overflow-2, and WRF. The actual benchmark codes and related test cases will be distributed on or about June 25, 2004. Questions regarding the Benchmarks will be accepted on June 28, 2004, but may or may not be addressed at the July 1, 2004 briefings, depending on the level of detail inquired. Additional questions can be submitted to GSA at any time during the RFQ process. Answers to detailed benchmark questions will be distributed to all qualified offerors subsequent to the July 1 and July 2 sessions. Responses to the RFQ will only be considered from companies who: (1) have offerings obtainable via existing GSA Contracts under Schedule 70 “General Purpose Commercial Information Technology Equipment, Software, Services”; (2) have demonstrated success in large scale manufacturing of commercially available, production HPC systems; and (3) have clearances allowing access to sensitive DoD technology and facilities. Potential offerors meeting the above criteria are invited to review Phase I of the RFQ and subsequently attend the industry briefing at the HPC Modernization Office in Arlington, VA. For more details about the HPCM Program visit the website at www.hpcmo.hpc.mil. Interested parties should notify Ms. Mona P. Neal via email at
[email protected], by COB June 21, 2004, indicating interest in attending the information briefing, providing proof of your ability to meet the eligibility requirements outlined above (no more than 5 pages), and identifying the representatives and their company affiliations that are requested to attend. Subsequent to assessing the June 21 submission, the Government will evaluate and determine eligibility. Letters of eligibility will be distributed by June 25, 2004. If the vendor is found to be eligible to participate, instructions will be given at that time addressing the scheduling of the one-on-one sessions for July 2, 2004. Only eligible vendors will be admitted to the July 1 and July 2 sessions. Attendees to the information briefing and subsequent one-on-one vendor question and answer session will be limited to four representatives per potential offeror.