CERN/FC/1511 Original: English CERN LIBRARIES, GENEVA CONFIDENTIAL 23 November, 1972 CM-P00088149 ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE NUCLÉAIRE CERN EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH FINANCE COMMITTEE Hundred-and-twenty-third Meeting Geneva - 19 December, 1972 ADJUDICATION CONCERNING THE COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR THE 300 GeV ACCELERATOR This adjudication concerns the computers for the control system of the 300 GeV Accelerator. Requests for tenders for this equipment were sent to eighteen firms in the CERN Member States and to three firms in the USA on 21 August 1972. Thirteen offers were received by CERN by the closing date, 13 October 1972. The Finance Committee is invited to agree that a contract be negotiated with A/S Norsk Data Electronikk for the manufacture, delivery and commissioning of twenty-four computers and peripheral equipment, and of those options that CERN decides to exercise, based on their offer to CERN for a fixed cost not exceeding 5 000 000 Swiss francs. 72/256/5/e CERN/FC/1511 ADJUDICATION CONCERNING THE COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR THE 300 GeV ACCELERATOR Introduction 1. The adjudication, referred to under item II-18 of document CERN/FC/1424, concerns the supply of computers and peripheral equipment for the control system of the 300 GeV accelerator. 2. Due to the large size of the accelerator, and the complicated control problems resulting, it is necessary to have a system made up of a number of small computers distributed in the various auxiliary buildings, together with either one medium-sized computer or several smaller computers at the central control area. CERN expressed a preference for the latter arrangement. 3. In May 1972, a preliminary enquiry for the complete system, including the data transfer, was sent out to 88 firms in 12 countries. Replies to the questionnaire were requested by the end of June 1972 and the response to this enquiry is shown in Table I. Of the 29 firms returning the questionnaire, 21 suggested systems using multiple small computers for the central control, three suggested systems using a single central computer, and the remaining five offered design services or data links. 4. An analysis of the replies confirmed the advantages of using multiple small computers for the central control, and it also showed that very few of the firms offering computers gave any detailed solution for the problems of the data transfer system. On the other hand, there were firms that were only interested in the data transfer. Therefore it was decided to split the system, and issue separate invitations to tender for the computers and for the data transfer system. This adjudication concerns the computers and peripheral equipment only. Invitation to tender 5. The invitation to tender for 24 computers and peripheral equipment, together with some optional equipment, was sent on 21 August 1972 to 18 firms in seven Member States, and to 3 firms in the USA, chosen as a result of the response to the preliminary enquiry (see letter to members of the Finance Committee, reference: LAB.II-DI/CP/RF-35.22, dated 23.8.1972). The closing date for offers was 13 October 1972. CERN/FC/1511 Page 2 6. The options included some additional core-store and peripheral equipment which is likely to be required when the system is fully developed, and also the controllers for driving the CAMAC interface system. The controllers were included as an option since in some cases they are available from the computer manufacturer and in others from specialist firms. 7. The tenders were opened on 18 October with the following results : - 13 firms had submitted a tender; - 8 firms had declined. The names of these firms are given in Table II. Analysis of the offers 8. The list of firms which have submitted an offer and the prices at tender opening are given in Table III. Despite the request for an inclusive net price, in many cases the total given on the tender form does not take into account discounts offered, or include such items as carriage, supervision of installation, commissioning, etc., which are priced separately. There were also some arithmetical errors. These have been taken into account and the cost of the standard and special software offered has been included in the total prices given in the second column of Table III. 9. Technical discussions have been held with all the firms submitting tenders, either before or after the tenders were received, and most of the firms have been visited and given the opportunity to demonstrate the equipment offered. 10. None of the offers fulfilled every requirement of the specification, and the number of major and minor departures from this are given in Table III. A minor departure is one that would not seriously interfere with the use of the equipment for the purpose required, and thus could be acceptable to CERN. 11. Particular attention has been given to those firms making the four lowest offers to ensure that they have understood fully all the requirements of the specification and to explore areas where there was some doubt as to whether the equipment of fered met the requirements. The number of major discrepancies in these four cases are summarized below, and details are given in the Appendix. CERN/FC/1511 Page 3 Major departures from Firm Computer specification Hardware Software Norsk Data NORD-10 0 1 C.I.I. Mitra 15 6 6 Data General Nova 820 7 6 Philips P860 7 9 12. In the particular conditions applicable to the tender, it was stated that if the equipment offered did not meet the requirements of the specification and if it seemed possible, within the time scale required, to commission additional work to make it meet the require- ments , the estimated cost of doing so would be added to the bid price for the evaluation. 13. In the case of Norsk Data, there are no major hardware departures. For the other three offers, most of the hardware departures are a result of the achitecture of the computers, and so do not lend themselves to correction by a customer or his agent. The major software departure in the case of Norsk Data is the absence of an interpreter. It is estimated that it would take three man- months to change the BASIC compiler into an interpreter, and if this was done by a specialist firm, it would cost about 30 000 Swiss francs. The same could apply to one of the departures in the case of C.I.I., where a BASIC compiler is also available, and at rather higher cost in the case of Philips, where there is no BASIC at all. However, most of the other software departures given in the table above would require major modifications to the operating systems to correct, and could not be considered in the time scale required. 14. In the specification, certain preferences were expressed for additional facilities or for particular ways of satisfying the requirements. Out of a total of 12 preferences, the four offers fulfilled the following number: Norsk Data 9 C.I.I. 4 Data General 6 Philips 4 CERN/FC/1511 Page 4 15. The technical questionnaire called for an evaluation of the times needed to perform four simple "benchmark" tests by the computers proposed. These times have been used to calculate the "time factors" given in Table IV. The smaller the time factor the faster the computer can complete the tests. The best time factor is given by the Norsk Data NORD-10 computer. 16. The offer from Norsk Data is the only one out of the four lowest that meets, or can be made to meet, the specification. As can be seen from Table III, the only other offer which has no hard- ware deficiencies is that from Digital Equipment Corporation, and that is almost 60% higher in price. 17. The computer offered by Norsk Data is the NORD-10. This is a replacement for the NORD-1, which has been in production for five years, and of which 82 examples had been installed up to July this year. The NORD-10 is a natural development of the NORD-1, taking advantage of recent advances in construction techniques, and providing some additional facilities. These include hardware floating-point arithmetic as standard, and an optional virtual memory scheme. All the software offered by Norsk Data is available now and has been demonstrated to CERN's representatives. It was developed for the NORD-1, but will run on the NORD-10 without any change whatsoever. 18. CERN is satisfied that Norsk Data has the technical and material facilities to carry out the development and production of any items not yet available for the NORD-10, within the time-scale required. The NORD-10 will be in production at the beginning of 1973, and Norsk Data have given the undertaking that, should there be any unforeseen delay in the production, they would supply CERN with equivalent NORD-1 computers temporarily without any extra cost to CERN. In addition, they have offered to supply two NORD-1 computers to CERN, on free loan, for applications program develop- ment. 19. The specification emphasized the need for reliabili- ty in the equipment for this application. Norsk Data provided failure records for 50 NORD-1 computers, from which it was possible to compute Mean Time Before Failure figures of over 10 000 hours for the CPU and over 20 000 hours for the memory. A large proportion of the installations carried out by Norsk Data up to now have been on board ships, and the computers are very robustly constructed to withstand the vibration and other adverse conditions.