Amendment 3

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 FY11/12 (TI-11/12) will be issued on or about February 3, 2011. Phase I of the RFQ will be issued primarily to determine general pricing, performance (via a set of DoD benchmarks) and related high performance computing (HPC) functional capabilities for HPC systems that can be delivered on or before April 2012. A down select to the most qualified quotes will be conducted using the Phase I supplied information. Phase II of the RFQ will request selected offerors to provided detailed pricing, system configuration, maintenance, and delivery information for one or more specific HPC system configurations to significantly improve the DoD's HPC capability and capacity. Issuance of a final RFQ (Phase II) is anticipated on or about May 31, 2011 and contract awards are anticipated in September of 2011. Previous Technology Insertion acquisitions conducted by GSA and the HPCMP addressed only one year of the HPCMP's fiscal year funding profile. It is noted that this TI-11/12 acquisition will address a two year funding profile of $70-$100M. It is expected that four to eight HPC systems will be purchased. The acquisition allows for none, one, or multiple contract awards. The application benchmark codes anticipated to be included in the TI-11/12 application benchmark suite are recognized by the following names: AVUS, CTH, GAMESS, HYCOM, ICEPIC, LAMMPS, ALEGRA, and ADCIRC. It is estimated that a system between 1,000 and 2,000 cores will be required to execute the benchmark test cases to the levels of performance required. Note that all benchmark runtimes submitted in response to the RFQ are considered guaranteed benchmark runtimes that will be selectively verified at the discretion of the government during system acceptance testing. The DoD HPCMP has extensive experience with the deployment of large scale commercially available HPC systems. Meeting the guaranteed system delivery and acceptance timeline is critical to the HPCMP addressing its mission. As a result, the resulting contract(s) will contain consideration clauses citing up to four (4) percent of the purchase price per month for late system delivery and acceptance and the right to reject the system in the event of a late or unsuccessful system acceptance. The HPCMP and GSA have conducted annual Technology Insertions since 2001 and have learned that the assembly and delivery of large production ready HPC systems (TI-10 contract awards consisted of multiple systems ranging between 13,000 and 44,000 cores) on the required DoD timeline is challenging. It has been determined that an important element for success includes contractual relationships directly between the Government and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of HPC class systems. As a result, responses to the RFQ will only be considered from pre-qualified original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who: (1) have offerings obtainable via existing GSA Contracts (held directly by the OEM) under Schedule 70, General Purpose Commercial Information Technology Equipment, Software, Services; (2) have demonstrated the sustainment of a commercially available HPC system's product line with success in large scale manufacturing, deployment and maintenance of commercially available, production HPC systems; and (3) have SECRET level clearances allowing access to sensitive DoD technology and facilities. Furthermore,(4) the Government financial appropriation associated with this acquisition does not permit the purchase of any supercomputer which is not manufactured in the United States. Interested HPC vendors are required to submit a NTE 10 page paper providing clear evidence of their ability to meet the above four (4) requirements. Please call out each of the four (4) requirements and provide a direct response to each. In cases where the OEM is acquiring substantial portions of a potentially offered system and/or related services 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. All responses are to be addressed to Ms. Deborah Joeckel at deborah.joeckel@gsa.gov by COB October 18, 2010. An evaluation of the information submitted will be conducted and letters of eligibility will be conveyed to qualified HPC OEM's by October 29, 2010. Due to the difficulty in addressing the performance benchmarking requirements in the time allotted between RFQ release in February of 2011 and vendor responses (quotes) due in mid-April of 2011, components of the performance benchmark suite consisting of HPC applications and test cases will be incrementally released to qualified vendors between November 2010 and February 2011. Qualified vendors will be informed of such releases. An information briefing will be offered to pre-qualified vendors. The briefing is currently scheduled for the morning of February 9, 2011, beginning at 9:00AM EST and will be followed by individual 30-minute vendor-specific one-on-one information exchange meetings scheduled for the afternoon of February 9 and, as needed, on February 10 to host all pre-qualified vendors. For more details about the HPCM Program, visit www.hpcmo.hpc.mil. As an example, FY10's TI-10 Phase I RFQ can be found by navigating from the "HPCMP Community Resources" link on the left hand side of the HPCMO home page to the "Technology Insertion 2010" link on the right hand side of the page. It is expected that the TI-11/12 RFQ will follow the same general form as the TI-10 RFQ with the addition of contract options included in the FY11 contract(s) that will allow for the obligation of FY12 funding in FY12. Questions can be submitted to GSA (Deborah Joeckel) at any time. SEP 17, 2010 Issue FedBiz Announcement OCT 18, 2010 Vendor Qualification Statements Due OCT 29, 2010 Final Determination of Qualified Vendors FEB 03, 2011 GSA Releases Phase I RFQ with Final Benchmark Suite FEB 09-10, 2011 Pre-quote Briefing and One-On-One Question and Answer APR 14, 2011 Phase I Quotes with Benchmark Timings due to GSA MAY 28, 2011 Notification of Phase II Down select MAY 31 2011 GSA Releases Phase II RFQ JUN 27, 2011 Phase II Quotes due to GSA SEP 09, 2011 NLT Date for Award(s) APR 01, 2012 HPC System Site Availability (estimate) MAY-NOV 2012 NLT Final Acceptance Point of Contact: Deborah Joeckel, Senior Contracting Officer, Phone (205) 731-0135 ext 205, Fax (205) 731-0138, Email deborah.joeckel@gsa.gov