Supercomputing resources secured for ASKAP Early Science

Magnus Supercomputer. Credit: Pawsey Centre.

17 December 2015

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS) has teamed up with leading scientists from the ASKAP early science projects to secure 750,000 core hours of processing time on the largest research supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, located in Perth Western Australia, houses resources available for data-intensive projects across the scientific spectrum, including radio astronomy, biotechnology, geosciences and nanotechnology.

For this proposal, the team, led by ASKAP Project Scientist Lisa Harvey-Smith, was awarded the resources on the Magnus supercomputer through the competitive National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme.

Magnus is the petascale ‘general purpose research system’ housed in the Pawsey Centre, debuted at #41 on the Top500 list in November 2014 and was ranked #77 in the November 2014 Green500 list of the most power efficient supercomputers in the world.

According to Lisa, the 750,000 core hours on Magnus will enable the teams working on ASKAP Early Science to carry out advanced science data processing [EDIT: originally awarded 600,000 core hours, the proposal has now received an additional 150,000 core hours through the Pawsey Partners Scheme].

"This allocation is great news for the ASKAP early science teams because it will provide them with vital computing resources for their advanced data processing during 2016," said Lisa.

The Pawsey Centre is also home to the ASKAP Central Processor, Galaxy, which fulfils the real-time processing requirements for ASKAP, as well as the research needs for the wider Australian radio astronomy community, such as the international Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope.

In addition to satisfying the real-time processing needs of ASKAP, the Pawsey Centre also provides archival storage in the form of the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive.

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