HPCwire: $80M HPC Project Boosts Australia-New Zealand SKA Bid

Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them

Translation Disclaimer

Subscribe | Sign In

Visit additional Tabor Communication Publications

Leading HPC
Solution Providers

August 27, 2009

$80M HPC Project Boosts Australia-New Zealand SKA Bid

Oct. 27 -- A new $80 million high-performance computing project launched in Perth today is a significant step forward for the joint Australia-New Zealand bid to host the $2.5 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio-telescope.

"This collaborative centre will have a radio-astronomy focus and be closely linked with the leading-edge Australian SKA Pathfinder radio-telescope being built in WA as a precursor to the SKA project," Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, said.

"It will build relationships with institutions like the new International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research to assist with providing the data-crunching power needed to interpret information from the Pathfinder and eventually -- we hope -- contribute to the SKA itself.

"The centre will go a long way towards demonstrating that Australia is ready to host the SKA. It will also boost WA's and Australia's wider research credentials by supporting work in other data-intensive disciplines, including mineralogy and chemistry.

"Nineteen nations have come together to create the SKA, a large-scale, new-generation radio telescope that will have a discovery potential 10,000 times greater than current instruments. It is one of the world's most significant mega-science projects.

"Australia and New Zealand have a vision of an SKA using up to four thousand antennas spread over five thousand kilometres to create a single deep space listening device that will be by far the most powerful of its type in the world, with the capacity to see back to the formation of the first stars.

"The sparsely populated mid-west region of WA is one of two sites being considered to host the core of the SKA, the other is in Southern Africa. A decision is expected in 2012.

"Hosting the SKA will bring enormous economic and scientific benefits, particularly to WA, including spin-offs in areas such as supercomputing, data transmission, renewable energy, construction and manufacturing.

"As evidenced by this project, the Rudd Government will continue to do all it can to promote WA as the world's best core site to host one of the world's greatest science projects."

The centre will be built next to the Australian Resources Research Centre in Perth on land owned by CSIRO using funds from the $160.5 million space and astronomy component of the Government's Super Science Initiative, which was announced in the 2009-10 Budget.

It will be operated by iVEC, an organisation dedicated to building supercomputing capacity in WA. iVEC is a joint venture between CSIRO and WA's four public universities, with support from the State Government.

"The new high-performance centre will be named after Dr Joseph Lade Pawsey (1908-1962), the father of radio-astronomy in Australia and one of the great pioneers in this field internationally," Senator Carr said.

"Australia's outstanding reputation in radio-astronomy today is due in no small part to the techniques Dr Pawsey helped develop -- techniques that are now applied in observatories worldwide.

"Dr Pawsey did important work in optical astronomy, ionospheric research, and radio-physics, as well as co-authoring the first comprehensive text on radio-astronomy and helping to found the new discipline of interferometry.

"Dr Pawsey enthusiastically advocated international scientific cooperation, so it's highly appropriate that a centre with strong links to one of the biggest international scientific collaborations of all time should be named after him," Senator Carr said.

For more information on the SKA, including pictures and animations, visit www.ska.gov.au or www.skatelescope.org.

-----

Source: Australian Labor Party

Share Options

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPCwire

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in join the Discussion

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Subscribe to All Content

All

May 23, 2012

May 22, 2012

May 21, 2012

May 18, 2012

May 17, 2012

May 16, 2012

May 15, 2012

May 14, 2012

May 11, 2012

Feature Articles

NVIDIA Works On CPU Co-Dependency Issues with Kepler GPU

NVIDIA is telling everyone that the GK110, its new Kepler GPU aimed at supercomputing, is all about improving performance per watt. But the other driving theme behind the new architecture is reducing the GPU's reliance on its CPU host. How well it accomplishes both these goals areas could determine the success of the new chip in high performance computing.
Read more...

OpenACC Starts to Gather Developer Mindshare

PGI, Cray, and CAPS enterprise are moving quickly to get their new OpenACC-supported compilers into the hands of GPGPU developers. At NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference this week, there was plenty of discussion around the new HPC accelerator framework, and all three OpenACC compiler makers, as well as NVIDIA, were talking up the technology.
Read more...

NVIDIA Launches Kepler Into HPC

NVIDIA has introduced its first Kepler-generation GPU product for high performance computing, and revealed some of the inner working of the new architecture. The announcement took place at the kickoff of the company's GPU Technology Conference taking place this week in San Jose, California.
Read more...