Seminars & Events

Mathematics and Computer Science Division
"The Square Kilometer Array: exascale computing in a radio telescope"

DATE: December 12, 2011 to December 12, 2011
TIME: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
SPEAKER: P. Chris Broekema, Researcher, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
LOCATION: Building 240, Conference Room, 4301, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Kamil Iskra

Description:
The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is an international project that aims to build a distributed radio telescope with a maximum baseline in the order of 3000 km, either in South Africa or Western Australia.

Although the estimated processing requirements still vary wildly, these are clearly beyond the capabilities of even the most modern supercomputers. The first phase of the SKA, scheduled for first operations in 2018, requires anywhere from several to several hundred petaflop/s, while the full SKA, which we expect to build around 2020, is well on its way to require far in excess of an exaflop/s. Additionally, the I/O requirements run firmly into the scary range of several terabytes/s.

It is clear that the SKA project is critically dependent on improvements in high-performance computing, and the ability of the project to efficiently leverage these improvements. It is also obvious that the unique requirements of the SKA instrument mean that we cannot expect a tailored solution to just appear a few years from now.

I will outline the SKA project and the experiences we've had building some of the pathfinder instruments. I'll also look at the processing requirements demanded by the SKA, how these match onto the projected developments in high-performance computing and where we can expect them to fall short.

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