The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) has awarded General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) a US$505m contract to provide supercomputing Resources as a Service.
The service is through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS) contract.
Systems will be designed, deployed and managed by GDIT and used to perform modeling of weather and climate patterns for use in generating forecast products supporting the National Weather Service.
The single-award indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) blanket purchase agreement (BPA) is worth US$505m covering a base period of eight years with one two-year option.
GDIT will receive task orders related to high-performance computing (HPC) deliverables including an initial task order of US$150m.
Kevin Connell, vice president of GDIT’s science and engineering business area, said, “Through this contract, the National Weather Service will expand their current computing power by more than 200% and continue to optimize their ability to provide accurate and timely weather forecasts.
“On behalf of GDIT’s company-wide High Performance Computing Center of Excellence, we look forward to supporting the National Weather Service’s numerical weather prediction and helping NOAA protect lives and property.”
Paul Nedzbala, head of GDIT’s federal civilian division, said, “This contract represents an important step in NOAA’s journey to foster even more precise weather forecasts. GDIT is proud to join NOAA and provide impressive innovations that support our federal customers and their important mission.”
GDIT will deploy two HPC systems at two sites on separate electrical power grids to support the numerical weather prediction suite of models used in national weather forecasting.
The contract will provide two equal computing systems with one serving as the operational system and the other primarily used for development when serving as the backup.