The body which heads the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project, the UK-based SKA Organisation, recently issued a request for proposals (RfP) for the pre- construction phase of the tele- scope. The RfP is directed at international consortia, to invite them to submit bids for work packages for the SKA.
These work packages will involve the design of key systems and components for the instrument, including antennas, data transport systems, high performance computers, receivers and signal processing systems. The aim of the preconstruction phase is to produce complete designs and blueprints for the SKA, allowing the SKA Organisation to issue tenders for the first construction phase.
The agency responsible for SKA-related activities in South Africa (including the precursor MeerKAT radio telescope array) is SKA South Africa (SKA SA). It reported in a press release that it “is positioned to play a prominent role in responding to this request because of the expertise contained in the SKA SA project team” as well as the involvement of local industry in the development and con- struction of the MeerKAT.
“The MeerKAT engineering team and local industries have been in discussions with their international peers to form consortia that will respond to the RfP,” it pointed out. SKA SA “is in the process of finalising a subsidy programme where local industry and institutions will be assisted to participate in this preparatory phase of the SKA on a shared risk basis, in order to develop the expertise, competency and know how to be internationally competitive in bidding for SKA contracts when the telescope is built.”
The preconstruction phase runs from now until the end of 2016. The actual construction of the instrument will be split into two phases. Phase 1 will run from 2016 to 2020 and Phase 2 from 2020 to 2024.
Meanwhile, SKA SA has also announced that South Africa has joined an international computing collaboration to support the development of the SKA. The collaboration was started last year by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (which is better known as Astron) and US group IBM, as a public-private partnership. Designated Dome (after the cupola that often protects telescopes) it was planned to run for five years.
SKA SA has now joined Dome, which still has four years to run. “The Dome collaboration brings together a dream team of scientists and engineers in an exciting partnership of public and private institutions,” highlighted Dome South Africa technical coordinator Simon Ratcliffe.
The aim of Dome is to do research into very fast but low-power computer systems operating on the exascale. Such computers would have five times the computing capacity of today’s fastest supercomputers. An exascale computer would be able to do 1018 floating point operations per second (Flops) – or one quintillion Flops. This scale of computing will be required to process the enormous amounts of data that will be produced by the SKA.
The SKA SA researchers will focus on three areas. The first is fundamental research into signal processing and advanced computer algorithms for the collection, processing and analysis of data. This is aimed at ensuring that clear images will be created from SKA data for scientists to study.
The second area is “desert-proofing” or “ruggedising” micro- servers being developed by the Dome project – these micro- servers are based on liquid-cooled three dimensional stacked chips. The third area will be the testing and development, using the 64-dish MeerKAT, of a software programme that will facilitate the optimal design of a holistic computing system for the complete, 3 000-dish SKA.
“The Dome research has implications far beyond astronomy,” pointed out IBM research dome project leader Dr Ton Engbersen. “These scientific advances will help build the foundation for a new era of computing, providing technologies that learn and reason.”
“Dome is not only innovating in the laboratory, but our user-platform is setting a new standard in open collaboration,” affirmed Astron dome project leader Dr Albert-Jan Boonstra. “In addition to SKA SA, four additional organisations are expected to join in the coming weeks, including universities and small and medium-sized businesses located in the Netherlands.”