The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) requires substantial computing advances in order to handle the amount of data it will receive.
The data collected by the SKA array in 24 hours would take two million years to play back on an iPod, says Ren'e Jacobs, MD of Gartner Africa.
Jasper Horrell, GM of science, computing and innovation at SKA SA, addressing delegates at Gartner Symposium in Cape Town, says the array is planned as the world's largest telescope. SA and eight partner countries in Africa will share about 70% of the project, with the rest being shared between Australia and New Zealand.
Data will be processed on the fly, as there will be too much information to stop capturing and process it, says Horrell. It is expected that phase one of the project will need to archive 10 petabytes of data and a petabyte or two will be added each year. Raw data will be stored for a short while, and science projects “forever” he says.
Mega data
About 800Gbps of data at peak times will come out the telescopes, says Horrell. The archive will be split between Cape Town and the site. The data rates on phase one will be 10 to 20 times that of the MeerKat, which will soon be under construction and will form part of the final array, he adds.
The SKA project will operate a radio telescope aggregating signals from thousands of small antennas spread across a square kilometre - one million square metres.
Horrell says the project needs affordable and flexible stream processing, effective use of millions of cores, a range of skills and computing advances in the next ten to 15 years. “Big data is a big concern for the SKA.”
The SKA budget of EUR1.5 billion will be split between the sites, with construction scheduled to begin in 2016. It is expected that some elements will be operational by 2020, with full operation under way in 2025.
Horrell says the array will be built in three different components: dishes, dense aperture arrays and sparse aperture arrays.
Higher levels of sensitivity - as much as 50 times greater than other telescopes - is expected to yield insights into many fields of astronomy, including the early evolution of the universe, the nature of gravity, and potentially life beyond our solar system.
Horrell says the telescope needs extreme sensitivity and requires excellent radio and a quiet location, and the Northern Cape is ideal because of its low population density.
Share
