Combined SSN NOI_.pdf

NIST-SS25-OISM-00696

POC: Monica H. Brown (monica.brown@nist.gov)

Title: Leadership Class Computing Services – Combined Sources Sought/Notice of Intent to Sole Source

BACKGROUND

***THIS IS A COMBINED SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE AND NOTICE OF INTENT TO

SOLE SOURCE***

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking information from sources that may be capable of providing a access to a High Performance Computing (HPC) system that provides requires access to a portfolio of scientific/technical software integral to the manner of research across the many scientific and technical disciplines in which NIST is engaged, as well as access to software optimization services and job management support to accelerate the productivity of NIST’s researchers. If no alternate sources are identified, the Government intends to issue a Sole Source Award to the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) (P.O. Box 9767, Austin, TX 78766-9767) under the authority of FAR 13.106- 1(b). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 541715, Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology).

NIST performs research in measurement science, in critical and emerging technologies, and performs investigations leading to services, standards, and guidelines that advance U.S.

competitiveness, economic security, and the wellbeing of U.S. citizens. NIST’s research spans a broad set of disciplines all requiring the combination of services found only at the nation’s most advanced academic supercomputing facility. The services NIST requires include access to distributed computational and data analytics capabilities, data storage suited for in-process computation, data storage for researcher’s data sets/results, and data storage for different levels of data sensitivity. NIST requires access to a portfolio of scientific/technical software integral to the conduct of research across the many scientific and technical disciplines in which NIST is engaged, as well as access to software optimization services and job management support to accelerate the productivity of NIST’s researchers. In addition, NIST requires research collaboration with the service provider possessing the computational domain expertise necessary to modify and enhance NIST’s computational codes to make the most efficient use of the HPC capabilities, architectures, and capacities offered. NIST also requires privileged access to the providers systems for NIST’s own HPC support experts affording NIST with capabilities to support NIST’s researchers and to acquire metrics on usage and NIST workload performance.

NIST also requires connectivity to the nation’s highest speed research and engineering computer networks enabling data transfers to between NIST and the provider to be accomplished with maximum efficiency while incurring no network data transfer costs for NIST.

NIST’s immediate requirement is for a HPC that provides access to a portfolio of HPC related services as follows:

• Frontera - comprised of 8,368 Intel 8280 compute nodes (the most powerful academic supercomputing system in the U.S. ),

• Vista – comprised of both NVIDIA’s GG and GH Superchips,

• Stampede3 – comprised of 1,858 compute nodes including nodes with Intel CPU and GPU Max processors,

• Lonestar6 – comprised of 560 compute nodes with AMD EPYC 7763 processors and 16 GPU nodes with both AMD EPYC 7763 processors and NVIDIA A100 GPUs

• and access to Horizon in the future.

• Provides scientific software portfolio facilitating research computing for the scientific disciplines NIST is engaged in as well as the means to add libraries and packages not currently installed on the system.

• Provides users with data storage services appropriate to HPC parallel computation as well, default user home file storage with backups, and additional storage offerings on storage systems suitable for use with sensitive data.

• Provides research staff to provide research collaboration, domain knowledge, and specialized programming expertise unique to each HPC system enabling NIST to optimally balance performance and computational expense.

• Has partnerships with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center providing a nationwide cyberinfrastructure ecosystem dedicated to advancing science through HPC.

HOW TO RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE

In responding to this notice, please DO NOT PROVIDE PROPRIETARY INFORMATION.

Please include only the following information, readable in either Microsoft Word 365, Microsoft Excel 365, or .pdf format, in the response. Submit the response by email to the Primary Point of Contact and, if specified, to the Secondary Point of Contact listed at the bottom of this notice as soon as possible, and preferably before the closing date and time of this notice.

• Provide the complete name of your company, address, name of contact for follow-up questions, their email, their phone number and, if your company has an active registration in https://sam.gov, your company’s Unique Entity ID (UEI).

• Details about what your company is capable of providing that meets or exceeds NIST’s minimum requirements.

• Whether your company is an authorized reseller of the product or service being cited and evidence of such authorization.

• Identify any aspects of the description of the requirements in the BACKGROUND section above that could be viewed as unduly restrictive or create unnecessary barriers https://sam.gov/ that adversely affect your firm’s ability to fully participate in a procurement for such services and explain why. Please offer suggestions for how the requirements could be organized or structured to encourage the participation of small businesses.

• For the NAICS code o Indicate whether your company is (a) a small business or (b) other than small business. See the Table of Small Business Size Standards and the associated .pdf download file for small business size standards and additional information.

o If you believe the NAICS code listed in this notice is not the best NAICS code for the type of product addressed in this notice, identify an alternative NAICS code that you believe would be more appropriate for the planned procurement.

• If your firm has existing Federal Supply Schedule contract(s) or other contracts for products or services against which the Department may be able to place orders, identify the contract number(s) and other relevant information.

• Describe your firm’s experience (as a prime, subcontractor, or consultant) providing the products or services described in Background section.

• Provide any other information that you believe would be valuable for the Government to know as part of its market research for this requirement.

• Please let us know if you would like to engage to get a better understanding of the requirement or need additional information about the Government’s requirement for the products or services described in the Background section.

QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS NOTICE

Questions regarding this notice may be submitted via email to the Primary Point of Contact and the Secondary Point of Contact listed in this notice. Questions should be submitted so that they are received by 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on May 8, 2025. Questions will be anonymized and answered via sources sought notice amendment following the question submission deadline.

IMPORTANT NOTES

The information received in response to this notice will be reviewed and considered so that the NIST may appropriately solicit for its requirements in the near future.

This notice should not be construed as a commitment by the NIST to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract.

This notice is not a request for a quotation. Responses will not be considered as proposals or quotations.

No award will be made as a result of this notice.

NIST is not responsible for any costs incurred by the respondents to this notice.

NIST reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and appropriate.

Thank you for taking the time to submit a response to this request!