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Supercomputer readies scientists for world’s most powerful telescope

A new University of Western Australia supercomputer that is 10,000 times faster than the average office PC could help scientists to develop the data processing capacity for the world’s largest telescope – which will funnel the same amount of computer data generated by the entire world in a year. The…

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Collectively, these dishes would have the power to detect signals from the earliest years of the universe. AAP/West Australian Government

A new University of Western Australia supercomputer that is 10,000 times faster than the average office PC could help scientists to develop the data processing capacity for the world’s largest telescope – which will funnel the same amount of computer data generated by the entire world in a year.

The installation of the Fornax supercomputer, by iVEC, is expected to strengthen a bid by Australia to host the giant radio telescope, which will peer billions of years back into the early life of the universe. The telescope is considered the world’s next mega-science project.

Australia is competing with South Africa to provide the location for the $2 billion “Square Kilometre Array”, which will spread more than 3,000 dishes across thousands of kilometres of territory.

The Australian proposal is to build the dishes on a sparsely populated outback plain in an area of Western Australia, the Murchison shire, which covers several thousand hectares but has a population of only a few hundred people.

In the meantime, the Fornax supercomputer will help drive two precursor radio telescopes, the Murchison Widefield Array − due for completion at the end of this year − and the Australian SKA Pathfinder, a CSIRO project which will be ready at the end of 2013. The SKA Pathfinder will be operated with involvement from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a joint venture between the University of Western Australia and Curtin University.

Despite mutterings in the scientific community that South Africa, along with eight African partner countries, will attract a sympathy vote from the deciding body in Britain, Curtin University’s Professor Peter Hall, who is Deputy Director responsible for Engineering at ICRAR, said that the contest was “very much 50-50 at the moment”.

The organisation handling the decision has not committed to an announcement date, but is thought likely to reveal its decision after it meets in early April.

“We do believe that our central site in Western Australia is a better radio quiet site than the South African site. We also think that over time it’ll be much less subject to population pressures than the African site. The site is as close to pristine as you can get.

“The idea is that this vast, groundbreaking technology will enable us to pick up signals from space that are very weak, signals from the early years of the universe. This would be transformational for astronomy, showing us how things formed.”

Dr Minh Huynh, an associate research professor at the University of Western Australia and deputy international SKA project scientist, said the new telescope would be about 40 to 50 times more sensitive than the world’s most powerful telescope.

“It will allow us to look back in time about 13 billion light years, just when the first stars and galaxies were forming. It will tell us about dark energy and dark matter, and try to detect gravity waves to find out whether Einstein was right about relativity.

“We might even detect signs of other civilisations, if there are any out there.”

A spokesman for ICRAR said the telescope would generate one exabyte of data, or a billion terabytes (or one quintillion bytes), every day while it scanned the sky “with the power to detect airport radars in other solar systems 50 light years away”.

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Comments (8)

  1. Permalink
    Roger Powell

    Roger Powell

    Engineer (Retired) (logged in via email @exemail.com.au)

    This article very strongly implies that a supercomputer is already humming away (in Western Australia), just waiting to process data from the SKA. I am sceptical of this and seek clarification.

    We don't even know yet if the SKA will be built in WA. Even if it is, it will not begin data acquisition until the end of the decade, so why would an SKA super-computer be put in place here and now? It's processing components will be obsolete in a few years by the time it is needed, if it is needed at all!

    If the article had mentioned that the computer is to be used for SKA-Pathfinder I would have believed it! Please clarify.

    1. Permalink
      David Satterthwaite

      David Satterthwaite

      Marketing Manager (logged in via email @ivec.org)

      Roger,

      You're quite correct. The supercomputer in this article (unless another has recently been installed) is the iVEC@UWA supercomputer "Fornax", part of the Pawsey Centre Project (an $80m Federal Government Super Science Initiative). Fornax (and the previously installed Epic supercomputer at Murdoch University) are pathfinder systems for the Pawsey Centre, a world-leading supercomputing facility under construction on CSIRO land in Kensington.

      The Centre will open in 2013/14 and will indeed…

      show full comment

        1. Permalink
          David Satterthwaite

          David Satterthwaite

          Marketing Manager (logged in via email @ivec.org)

          Thank you for that Justin. Just to clarify, the article should acknowledge iVEC as the installer (on behalf of The University of Western Australia who own the machine).

          I'd also question in the fifth paragraph where you state that ICRAR operates the Australian SKA Pathfinder - I'd suggest researching that and re-wording it to more clearly reflect the CSIRO's ownership of the project and ICRAR's level of involvement.

          Some info here http://www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap/ and here http://www.icrar.org/research/ska/ska-pathfinder

          Thanks,

          David

            1. Permalink
              David Satterthwaite

              David Satterthwaite

              Marketing Manager (logged in via email @ivec.org)

              Hi Justin,

              Thanks again. One last comment - could you please change our name to iVEC? We've not regularly called ourselves the Interactive Virtual Environments Centre for years now - but that was a great blast from the past! :)

              Thanks,

              David

      2. Permalink
        Roger Powell

        Roger Powell

        Engineer (Retired) (logged in via email @exemail.com.au)

        Thank you David, for your clarification, which was pretty much what I suspected. My understanding is that SKA expect to utilise computer technology which is not yet even developed. I was very surprised to read that it was already up and running, just waiting for the SKA to hook into it.