IBM and ASTRON are together to explore the far sides of universe
IBM has announced, on April 2, the five years DOME Project in collaboration with Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) to see through the extreme far reaches of the universe. The project has been named for the protective cover on the telescopes and the Swiss mountain.
[hana-code-insert name=’StumbleUpon’ /][hana-code-insert name=’Reddit’ /]The project would cost 32.9 million Euros initially to initiate very large scale computer systems to operate international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, which will the world’s largest and most sensitive telescope.
Ton Engbersen, IBM Research – Zurich explains, “If you take the current global daily Internet traffic and multiply it by two, you are in the range of the data set that the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope will be collecting every day. This is Big Data Analytics to the extreme. With DOME we will embark on one of the most dataintensive science projects ever planned, which will eventually have much broader applications beyond radio astronomy research.”
“Large research infrastructures like the SKA require extremely powerful computer systems to process all the data. The only acceptable way to build and operate these systems is to dramatically reduce their power consumption. DOME gives us unique opportunities to try out new approaches in Green Supercomputing. This will be beneficial for society at large as well,” said Marco de Vos, Managing Director of ASTRON.
The project will hopefully be ended in 2024 and will enable the researchers to look beyond the edges of the universe.
