DOC NOAA NCEP Operational (OPS) High Performance Computing Systems (HPCS) Notice of Intent to Sole-Source

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) intends to negotiate on a noncompetitive basis with IBM Corporation of Bethesda, Maryland, to provide an additional year, date of award through one calendar year, of service of an existing IBM Power5+ high performance computing (HPC) system being leased by NOAA/NWS/NCEP under contract DG133W-02-CN-0013. The HPC system is located in NASA's Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) facility in Fairmont, West Virginia. This synopsis serves to notify the public of the proposed contract action. The Government intends to modify the existing contract to extend the existing lease of a Power5+ system one additional year. The system provides processing capability, storage, networking, software, services in support of operational activities associated with the Weather and Climate Supercomputing program. The existing HPC system was designed by IBM to provide a balanced supercomputing environment that includes not only large-scale computing but disk storage and infrastructure to access existing data archives. The system is an existing operational supercomputer cluster known as "Dew", comprised of an IBM P5+ p575 cluster employing 2368 Power5+ processors with 2GB memory per processor and 160 TB disk. IBM also provides system administration and other system related support services under the contract. The HPC system - Dew currently utilized by NCEP directly supports NOAA's strategic goals in Climate and Weather and Water by enabling its research into the physical processes governing the Earth's weather, climate and ocean. The HPC system must provide a continuation of operational performance at least equivalent to Dew, including support of the IBM GPFS parallel filesystem and IBM's software suite, especially IBM compilers. The HPC system must be fully supported by system administrators and maintenance provided on a best effort basis. The HPC system must continue to support full integration with the existing tape archival system. In addition, the HPC systems must be integrated into NCEP's local area network and NCEP's wide area network, supported by industry standard communications hardware/software. Both Verizon and Quest have points of presence within the Fairmont facility. The estimated budget for the additional year of system utilization is approximately $700,000.00. NOAA anticipates leasing the hardware and software and purchasing software and system support services under fixed-price terms. Maintenance and support services will be included in the acquisition. Vendors who believe they can satisfy the Government's requirements are invited to submit an affirmative response. To be considered an affirmative response, vendors must submit written data and documentation which demonstrates and ability to furnish a production-ready system capable of meeting the previously cited requirements and a facility to support that system. Seamless integration of the HPC system into the existing infrastructure is required. Of particular concern to the Government is accomplishment of system integration with zero disruption of NCEP's climate reanalysis project activities. Vendors must include in their response an explanation, in detail, of its plan to implement and manage integration with the existing HPC and communications systems. All responsible sources must submit a written narrative statement of capability including detailed technical information and other technical literature sufficient to permit agency analysis in order to determine a bona fide capability to meet the requirements. A determination by the Government not to open the requirement for competition based upon responses to this notice is solely within its discretion. Affirmative responses must be received within fourteen (14) after publication of this synopsis.