Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- COMPUTING SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE SOL BAA96-07-1 DUE 032296 POC Dr. Robert Lucas, ARPA/ITO/, Fax (703) 522-2668. COMPUTING SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE SOL BAA96-07 - PART 1 of 2 DUE March 22, 1996 POC Dr. Robert Lucas, ARPA/ITO, FAX: (703)522-2668. The ARPA Computing Systems & Software Division of the Information Technology Office supports research in scalable computing and advanced software technologies needed to enable the development, introduction, and effective use of advanced high-performance computing technologies in Defense-critical applications. Research in this area covers a broad range of computing systems technology issues from enabling design and microarchitectures to research into future generation computing system architectures and associated operating systems and programming environments that accelerate the transition of that research into both defense systems and commercial systems which are appropriate for defense purposes. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches and techniques that lead to or enable revolutionary advances in the state-of-the-art. Research should result in prototype hardware and software demonstrating concepts and approaches. Specifically excluded is research which primarily results in evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice or focuses on a specific system or hardware solution. This Computing Systems and Software BAA covers selected research topics from the High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) program areas of Microsystems, Scalable Systems and Software, Systems Environments, Advanced Vision Systems (AVIS), and Embedded HPC. Topics for FY96 are selected to complement ongoing research in the High Performance Computing Program by significantly pushing the envelope of performance and addressing the most critical areas of research in design, architectures, and software that will accelerate the realization of a viable scalable computing technology base for Defense. Research is sought in seven technical areas. Areas 1 - 4 are contained in this Part 1 of the BAA. Areas 5 - 7 are set forth in Part 2. The first four areas are as follows: 1) METACOMPUTING RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. Metacomputing systems harness the aggregate power of distributed, heterogeneous computing assetsfor critical Defense applications, allowing users to efficiently share global resources while assuring application requirements through an abstract virtual machine model. Resource management strategies that reconcile application demands with global constraints represent a key enabling technology. Therefore, innovative, tractable approaches to end-to-end resource management in heterogeneous distributed systems that meet real-time, availability, and security constraints are sought. ARPA is particularly interested in approaches that offer high assurance to Defense users through bounds or guarantees on the quality of computing services rendered and adaptability through negotiation between clients and servers. Successful proposals will further leverage the ARPA scalable computing base. 2) COMPILER INFRASTRUCTURE. To reduce the barrier to entry into the compiler research field, broaden the scope of existing efforts, and allow researchers to leverage each other's work, ARPA is soliciting proposals for research toward an infrastructure for compiler research. Such an infrastructure will provide researchers with robust language parsers and code generators as well as well-defined intermediate formats, related tools, interpreters, and debuggers. The intermediate forms must be formally specified and semantically self-contained with rich-enough annotations to support whole-program analysis. The compiler infrastructure must also be extensible as both the languages of interest and the target architectures are expected to continue changing at a rapid pace. 3) HYBRID MICROARCHITECTURES. This area seeks to develop high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) technology to complement general-purpose (GP) processors in Defense signal processing and analysis applications. Areas of interest include: (A) novel, compiler-friendly hybrid DSP/GP microarchitectures pushing the performance envelope beyond 1-10 Gflops and 10-100 Gops per chip at 1 watt, with generic design rules for fabrication in multiple foundries and pathways for fabrication in high-volume facilities, (B) high-speed signaling that provides 1 gigabyte/second per electrical connection, with mechanisms for making designs openly available, (C) hardware/software chip-to-chip interfaces (DSP-DSP, DSP-GP, and DSP-memory) to support seamless, scalable, end-to-end integration of multiple, heterogeneous DSP, GP, and memory assets (proposals should address /O support, asynchronous GP/DSP operation synchronization, on-the-fly conversions, memory access, and use of these resources in scalable, processing environments), and (D) software interfaces in the form of application program interfaces (API) and related libraries for signal and image processing, that are portable, scalable, and can be incorporated into existing environments such as Khoros, Matlab, and PGM. 4) VISUALIZATION OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS. This area seeks to develop and exploit new, scalable image-processing architectures and visualization technology to analyze and display the software and hardware interactions of complex scalable computing systems including massively parallel processors, symmetric multiprocessors, or heterogeneous distributed systems. Proposed architectures may be network-based accelerators or be tightly coupled to a single scalable processor but must be connected through open standard interfaces to the host system. They should provide high-performance graphics and image manipulation. Visualization efforts should aim to develop virtual environments that capture and display data on system behavior and provide direct manipulation of program behavior, debugging of component interactions, and adaptive control of parallel system and resource management policies. Proposed visualization technology should provide multiple levels of visualization, the ability to focus on specific critical parts of the system, and accommodate scalability. Efforts are also sought to instrument scalable systems with the appropriate hooks to facilitate interaction with visualization technology. PROGRAM SCOPE:Proposals for individual efforts should not exceed three years in length. Technologies which have a broad impact on military capability will be given highest priority. Initial contract awards are expected to be made during the second quarter of calendar 1996. Multiple awards are anticipated. Qualifying but unfunded proposals may be held for further consideration for FY97 funding. Collaborative efforts and teaming are encouraged where appropriate. GENERAL INFORMATION: In order to minimize unnecessary effort in proposal preparation and review, proposers are strongly encouraged to submit brief proposal abstracts in advance of full proposals. An original and six (6) copies of the proposal abstract must be submitted to ARPA/ITO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714, (ATTN: BAA 96-07) onor before 4:00 PM EST, January 22, 1996. Proposal abstracts received after this date may not be reviewed. After evaluation of the proposal abstracts, ARPA will provide offerors with an indication of the relevance and acceptability of the technical ideas proposed. Proposers must submit an original and six (6) copies of full proposals by 4:00 PM EST, March 22, 1996 in order to be considered. Proposers must obtain a pamphlet, BAA 96-07 Proposer Information, which provides further information on areas of interest, the submission, evaluation, funding processes, proposal abstract, and full proposal formats. This pamphlet may be obtained by fax, electronic mail, or mail request to the administrative contact address given below, as well as at URL address http://www.ito.arpa.mil/Solicitation.html. Proposals not meeting the format described in the pamphlet may not be reviewed. This notice, in conjunction with BAA 96-07-Part 2 and the pamphlet BAA 96-07 Proposer Information, constitutes the total BAA. No additional information is available, nor will a formal RFP or other solicitation regarding this announcement be issued. Requests for same will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal which shall be considered by ARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals. However, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of this research for exclusive competition among these entities. Evaluation of proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal using the following criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (1) overall scientific and technical merit, (2) potential contribution and relevance to ARPA mission, (3) offeror's capabilities and related experience, (4) plans and capability to accomplish technology transition, and (5) cost realism. All administrative correspondence and questions on this solicitation, including requests for information on how to submit a proposal abstract or proposal to this BAA, must be directed to one of the administrative addresses below for receipt by 4:00 P EST, March 15, 1996, e-mail or fax is preferred. ARPA intends to use electronic mail and fax for correspondence regarding BAA 96-07. Proposals and proposal abstracts may not be submitted by fax, any so sent will be disregarded. The administrative addresses for this BAA are: Fax: (703)522-2668 Addressed to : ARPA/ITO, BAA 96-07, Electronic Mail: baa9607@arpa.mil, Electronic File Retrieval: http://www.ito.arpa.mil/Solicitations.html, Mail: ARPA/ITO, ATTN: BAA 96-07, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. (0341)

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