[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 23 (Wednesday, February 4, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 6063-6064]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-02088]


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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Department of Army


Notice of Intent To Seek Partners for a Cooperative Research and 
Development Agreement and Licensing Opportunity for Operating System 
(OS) Friendly Microprocessor Architecture Invented and Patent Pending 
by U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command

AGENCY: Department of Army, DoD.

ACTION: Notice of intent seeking partners.

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SUMMARY: The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMRDEC) is seeking 
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) partners to 
collaborate in transitioning OS Friendly Microprocessor Architecture 
(OSFA) into commercial and/or government application(s). OSFA 
references approved for public release are provided [1-2]. Interested 
potential CRADA collaborators will receive detailed information on the 
current status of the project after signing a confidentiality 
disclosure agreement (CDA) with AMRDEC. Guidelines for the preparation 
of a full CRADA proposal will be communicated shortly thereafter to all 
respondents with whom initial confidential discussions will have 
established sufficient mutual interest. CRADA applications submitted 
after the due date may be considered if a suitable CRADA collaborator 
has not been identified by AMRDEC among the initial pool of 
respondents. Licensing of background technology related to this CRADA 
opportunity is also available to potential collaborators.

DATES: Interested candidate partners must submit a statement of 
interest and capability to the AMRDEC point of contact before April 10, 
2015 for consideration.

ADDRESSES: Comments and questions may be submitted to: Department of 
Army, US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Aviation 
and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center, ATTN: RDMR-
CST, Office of Research and Technology Applications (Ms. Wallace), 5400 
Fowler Road, Redstone Arsenal, AL 35898.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Questions about the proposed action 
can be directed to Ms. Cindy Wallace (256) 313-0895, Office of Research 
and Technology Applications, email: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
    1. Project Description: AMRDEC seeks to ensure that technologies 
developed by AMRDEC are expeditiously commercialized and brought to 
practical use. The purpose of a CRADA is to find partner(s) to 
facilitate the development and commercialization of a technology that 
is in an early phase of development. Respondents interested in 
submitting a CRADA proposal should be aware that it may be necessary 
for them to secure a patent license to the above-mentioned patent 
pending technology in order to be able to commercialize products 
arising from a CRADA. CRADA partners are afforded an option to 
negotiate an exclusive license from the AMRDEC for inventions arising 
from the performance of the CRADA research plan.
    2. Technology Overview: Conventional microprocessors have not tried 
to balance hardware performance and OS performance at the same time. 
The goal of the OS Friendly Architecture (OSFA) is to provide a high 
performance microprocessor and OS system. The architecture's cache 
memory banks provide for near instantaneous context switching and 
hardware based information assurance. The OS Friendly Microprocessor 
Architecture includes hardware permission bits for each cache bank and 
each memory address.
    The OS Friendly Architecture is a switched set of cache memory 
banks in a pipeline configuration. For light-weight threads, the memory 
pipeline configuration provides near instantaneous context switching 
times. The pipelining and parallelism provided by the memory pipeline 
configuration provides for background cache read and write operations 
while the microprocessor's execution pipeline is running instructions. 
The cache bank selection controllers provide arbitration to prevent the 
memory pipeline and microprocessor's execution pipeline from accessing 
the same cache bank at the same time. This separation allows

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the cache memory pages to transfer to and from level 1 (L1) caching 
while the microprocessor pipeline is executing instructions.
    OS information assurance is implemented in hardware. By extending 
Unix file permissions bits down to each cache memory bank and memory 
address, the OSFA provides hardware level information assurance. OS 
level access to cache controller banks is divided into access layers. 
Only the OS has permission to access and modify permission bits. The OS 
access layers also support partitions for a high reliability 
microkernel, hypervisors and full featured OS.
    For each software application, a table sets limits for all OS 
library function calls required by the application. Each library 
function call has a set of object limits. Exceeding the limits either 
requires higher than user level privileges or raises an exception.
    The full CRADA proposal should include a capability statement with 
a detailed description of collaborators' expertise in the following and 
related technology areas: (1) Microprocessor design; (2) computer 
security; (3) information assurance; (4) collaborators' expertise in 
successful technology transition; and (5) collaborator's ability to 
provide adequate funding to support some project studies is strongly 
encouraged. A preference will be given to collaborators who shall 
manufacture hardware in the United States.
    Collaborators are encouraged to properly label any proprietary 
material in their CRADA proposal as PROPRIETARY. Do not use the phrase 
``company confidential.''
    3. Publications: a. P. Jungwirth and P. LaFratta: ``OS Friendly 
Microprocessor Architecture,'' US Patent Application 20140082298, March 
2014. http://www.google.com/patents/US20140082298.
    b. P. Jungwirth and P. LaFratta: ``OS Friendly Microprocessor 
Architecture,'' white paper, US Army AMRDEC, March 2014. (email Ms. 
Wallace at [email protected] to request a copy of this 
paper).
    c. P. Jungwirth and P. LaFratta: ``OS Friendly Microprocessor 
Architecture: Hardware Information Assurance,'' January 2014. (email 
Ms. Wallace at [email protected] to request a copy of this 
paper, a CDA is required to receive a copy of this paper).

Brenda S. Bowen,
Army Federal Register Liaison Officer.
[FR Doc. 2015-02088 Filed 2-3-15; 8:45 am]
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