RECOVERY ACT - ACCELERATOR TECHNOLOGIES AND EARTH SYSTEMS

The purpose of this notice is to provide the public the announcement of NASAGoddard Space Flight Centers (GSFC's)intent to negotiate with Northrup GrummanInformation Technologies (NG), Herndon, VA an effort to test software to meet the needsof our particular use implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under existing indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity Task Order NNG06HN01D, NG willprovide all necessary support services to perform an analysis entitled, "AcceleratorTechnologies and Earth System Models". The goal of this Order is to have NG evaluate thesuitability of the current generation of hardware "accelerators" (e.g. commercialproducts such as the NVIDIA Tesla series of graphical processing units (GPU's)). Thisclass of commercially available processors can potentially improve performance of keyaspects of NASA's weather and climate models. The Contractor's evaluation shouldprimarily analyze the potential performance benefits against the labor costs for adaptingNASA's software to exploit this technology. In addition to the software costs, theContractor will analyze costs associated with integrating accelerators within a computingenvironment including power and cooling considerations. The computational kernels ofNASA's weather/climate models to be considered within this task are: 1)Solar radiation(SORAD) component from the GEOS-5 model; 2) Cubed-sphere Finite Volume Dynamical Core(CSFVCore); and 3) Sparse Matrix Vector Gear Code (SMVGEAR) from the Global ModelingInitiative (GMI) model.For each of these kernels, NG shall perform an initial evaluation to determine the beststrategy for studying the potential performance impact of accelerator technology. When afull port for a given kernel is not feasible, NG shall provide a written explanation ofboth the nature of the difficulty and a rationale for a proposed alternativeimplementation where appropriate. This explanation shall also estimate the possibleerror in the performance estimation due to such simplifications. NG shall commit thefinal implementation prototypes to the sourcemotel.gsfc.nasa.gov repository. NG shall deliver a draft and final version of a comprehensive report which summarizes thepotential performance impact of accelerator technologies for NASA Earth system modeling. This document must address the degree to which the selected kernels are representativeof the computational work on NASA's high-end computers. The document must also estimatethe conversion/maintenance costs associated with migrating full models to exploitaccelerator technologies. The report must estimate the potential for future support forcompiler and/or Fortran support (e.g. Portland Group GPU Fortran directives) for usingthis technology within scientific models. GSFC will make the final report available tothe public.The following lists the deliverables under this Sub-Task Order: 1)Weekly: oralstatus reports to the Contracting Officer Technical Representative (COTR); 2) Start + 4weeks: Written evaluation strategy for all 3 computational kernels delivered to COTR andContracting Officer (CO); 3) Start + 20 weeks: Prototype implementation of all 3computational kernels delivered to COTR; 4)Start + 22 weeks: Draft version of acomprehensive report described above delivered to the COTR. GSFC will return it'spreliminary 2 business weeks from receipt for further processing to NG; and 5) Start + 24weeks: Final version of a comprehensive report described above delivered to the COTR andthe CO.The existing Task Order is a Cost-Plus-Award-Fee arrangement awarded to NG 10/2005 whichwas awarded on a competitive basis. NG is not listed on the Excluded Parties List Systemand therefore eligible to receive Recovery Act funds.