The Dutch government has been funding research into ultra-fast, energy-efficient computer systems with fifteen million euros. The research is needed for the massive amounts of data from a new radio telescope.
The research is being carried out by IBM and the Netherlands institute for radio astronomy Astron. In the first five years, the project will 32,9 million euro; 15 million of which is funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, as the government has announced.
The fast supercomputers are needed to support the huge amount of data of the still to be built Square Kilometre Array, a telescope consisting of a large amount of dishes which, as the name suggests, a square kilometer is covered. The telescope will probably be built in Australia, South Africa or New Zealand, because that is where the least interference occurs.
The telescope, which is in 2024 operating, will provide a huge amount of data to generate and for that, the current infrastructure is insufficient. According to Astron will the telescope one exabyte of data per day to produce, or 106 terabytes. The required computing power for the telescope to work is ‘many millions’ of times higher than the fastest computers that exist today, the institute.
The new supercomputers must work very quickly, but also energy efficient. Thought to chips in three dimensions are constructed. For the supercomputers are also high-speed optical interconnects are needed; the throughput of current interconnects are insufficient. Also storage of large amounts of data is a challenge. For this purpose, for example to new forms of tape vaulting.
Artist’s impression of the Square Kilometre Array