The US Geological Survey (USGS) is looking for a data center to serve as a home for its next high-performance computing system.

The agency is in search of an existing data center facility in the Rocky Mountains region within 150 miles of the Denver Federal Center in Colorado to deploy its HPC5 system.

In a sources sought request, the USGS states that the data center facility needs to have a minimum of 3MW capacity and have potential expansion up to an additional 4MW within 120 days of notice.

It needs to have a minimum of 12,000 square feet (1,114 sq m) of white space for compute racks, storage racks, and service aisles.

The data center also requires a minimum of 10" raised floor to accommodate "high-capacity liquid cooling" from below. The data center shall provide 65°F (18.3°C) chilled water and must accommodate return temperatures up to 80°F (26.7°C) without coordination with or modifications from the facility.

For air cooling, it also needs to be able to handle an additional transfer of residual heat to air of at least 0.5MW.

"This colocation of HPC resources sets the foundation for establishing future open science infrastructure, starting with the ability to easily share data and computing between USGS and other Earth science organizations, and academic collaborators," the sources sought request states.

USGS supercomputers have historically been installed at the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, which was first set up in 1973 to handle and distribute Landsat satellite data.

Last summer, the USGS launched the Hovenweep supercomputer at EROS as the third HPC at the site in South Dakota. It also has a contract with Alpha Federal to use its data center in Charleston, West Virginia.

However, the agency is in search of a new facility as it "currently does not have data center space suitable for the cooling and power density requirements of modern supercomputers."

Interested parties have until February 26 to reach out to the USGS.