Southeastern Universities Research Association, Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, 12000 Jefferson Avenue, Newport News, Virginia 23606

70 -- UNIX PLATFORM Sol SURA-95-R009. Due 052495. For information contact Ross Small, Subcontracts Manager at (804) 249-7603. The Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) has a prime subcontract with the Department of Energy for work in connection with the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). CEBAF will be soliciting proposal for two open-ended requirements contracts to provide UNIX workstations for the CEBAF experimental program for the Fiscal Years (FY) 1995-1999. Two vendors will be selected in this initial procurement phase due to the desirability of supporting two UNIX operating systems to insure portability of developed code between platforms but minimizing the administration staffing requirements. The total MIPS required to support the off-line data acquisition and data reduction activity of the laboratory for the requirements contracts time frame is: FY95 - 500 MIPS; FY96 - 3,000 MIPS: FY97 - 10,000 MIPS; FY98 - 20,000 MIPS; FY99 - 30,000 MIPS. Delivery orders during the FY95-99 time period against the two contracts which are awarded will be placed based on the vendor's product that offers the best price/performance ratio and closest suitability of the vendor product line with each stated requirement at the time of purchase. Orders may include both Symmetric Multiprocessing CPUs as well as individual workstations, both with and without graphics monitors. The UNIX workstations must meet the specifications listed below. SECTION I, Technical Specifications: (1) Machine Architecture: (a) All machines in the vendor product line submitted must be binary compatible from low end workstations to high end SMP-class CPUs, must be a flavor of UNIX and support the standard suite of UNIX commands and program development capabilities including support for telnet, ftp, Berkeley remote shell commands, Motif, and NFS. (b) Current offerings include modules to provide: Ethernet and FDDI connectivity, SCSI II FAST WIDE disk interface, hardware and software support for both Exabyte 8mm and 4mm DAT tape units. (c) Machine configurations must exist that can support multiple-CPU farms (e.g. no monitor required). (d) Intelligent network interfaces exist so the CPU load is minimized for network I/O. (2) Available and Supported Software: (a) Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) software (either vendor or Third Party) exists for this platform and operates with CERN's SHIFT and FATMEN software. (b) Compilers exist for this platform for at minimum: C, C++, and Fortran. (c) Ports exist for each of the following public domain products for this platform: EMACS, PERL, CERN libraries, and GNU C, make, Tcl/Tk and EXPECT. (d) Commercial and/or public domain products currently exist for this platform which provide GUI-based code development environments, code management, testing, and debugging (CVS, RCS, or other). (3) Performance: Optimized trade-off is demonstrted between maximum performance per node and aggregate performance for clusters of nodes for scientific codes. This optimization should include consideration of the associated networking, physical space, power and cooling requirements, and systems administration issues. SECTION II, Desirable Features: (1) The current byte ordering should be binary compatible with Big-Endien architecture or alternatively provide byte reordering capabilities with minimal performance degradation. (2) Supported UNIX file system size of at least 4 GB or greater. (3) Fully supports the integration of Third Party memory, disk, and tape peripherals. (4) AFS and/or DFS implementations exist for this platform. (5) POSIX compliant operating system and software. (6) 64-bit architecture plus 32-bit compatibility in the compiler which will generate 32-bit addresses and force the program to execute in a 32-bit virtual address space. (7) Centralized system management capabilities and utilities. (8) Support IEEE 32 bit (single precision) and 64 bit (double precision) floating point formats. SECTION III, Vendor Qualifications: Vendors must meet the following minimum requirements: (1) At least five years marketing UNIX based CPUs. (2) At least 5% of the current U.S. Unix workstation market. (3) Demonstrated adherence to open hardware and software standards. Interested firms must respond in writing and provide the following documentation in the order listed: (1) Document specifically addressing in order how the product line submitted meets each of the Technical Specifications listed in Section I. (2) Document addressing in order any items from the Desired Capabilities (Section II). (3) Current GSA schedules (and discount rates) for UNIX CPUs, including SMP-class machines. Budgetary quote for any other proposed discount agreement with SURA/CEBAF. (4) Chart providing comparative performance ratings on their UNIX product line, including, at a minimum, clockspeed, floating point and integer performance ratings (in SPECint, SPECfp or other international standard ratings scheme), bus speed, I/O capability (SCSI II, SCSI II FAST, SCSI II FW, etc.); network adapters (minimally Ethernet and FDDI), (5) Description and GSA pricing of original machine warranty plus hardware/software subsequent year maintenance options and pricing base. (6) Description and GSA pricing of original machine warranty plus hardware/software subsequent year maintenance options and pricing base. (6) Description of the current software licensing strategies for both operating system and layered products (CPU-based, concurrent user, locked user, etc.). (7) Description of their current corporate programs for trade-in/trade-up of both their own and other manufacturers' workstations. (8) A description of current and past corporate experience in the manufacture and support of UNIX CPUs and SMP-class machines, including a corporate strategy to support standards-based development to support Open Software Foundation's (OSF's) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), etc., and higher network and I/O performance protocols (Specifcally ATM and Fibre Channel). (9) List of 5 or more customer references that may be contacted preferably from a laboratory, scientific, or engineering environment; and list must include at least 3 references who can provide information regarding portingcode from other UNIX platforms to this platform). Responses to this synopsis will be evaluated to determine which firms are considered capable of meeting the specifications and objectives of this procurement. Responses will be considered based on the following criteria: (1) Ability to meet the technical specification (Section I above). (2) Ability to provide the desirable features (Section II above). (3) Meeting the minimum qualification stated in Section III above. (4) Vendor experience, commitment to Open Standards, and investment and strategy towards the development of other advanced processor technologies and advanced operating systems. Additionally, vendors which are conidered capable of meeting the specifications and objectives of this procuremet will be asked to meet with CEBAF and make presentations during May and June 1995 to the CEBAF UNIX Platform Selection Committee. The presentation must specifcally address (in order): (1) CEBAF Required Technical Specifications (Section I); (2) Desirable features, including future features that are planned. Other capabilities that the vendor believes would be desirable to CEBAF should also be discussed. (3) Review of the firm's qualifications (Section III). (4) Provide corporate nondisclosure documentation to indicate corporate investment and commitment toward the development of 64 bit and other advanced processor technologies, as well as future developments in the areas of high performance storage, advanced operating systems, and Open Standards such as Open Software Foundation's (OSF's) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). Responses must include all the above requested documentation, and must be mailed to the Procurement Department, 12000 Jefferson Avenue, Newport News, VA 23606 in time to be received by May 24, 1995. Questions regarding this procurement should be telefaxed to Ross Small at 804-249-7057. (117)

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