UCAM 007/14 Development of a Domain Specific Language and Optimiser for the SKA Science Data Process

Descriptions

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA, http://www.skatelescope.org/) is a major international project to build a next generation radio astronomy observatory. The anticipated construction cost of the full SKA is about 2 billion Euros. When completed, the SKA will be, by a large margin, the largest and most sensitive low-frequency radio observatory ever built.The SKA is currently in “Pre-Construction” phase to prepare for the construction of Phase 1. The Science Data Processor will process all of the data from each of the three telescopes specified in Phase 1 and will have the responsibility of delivering these data in usable form to the end-users – the scientists. The challenge for the SDP is in the volume of the data than needs to be handled, the high overall compute requirement, the need to keep power consumption minimum to reduce operational expenditure, the need to allow flexible and evolving algorithms for processing the data so that best use of the telescope is made, and the need to allow easy upgrade of the compute hardware as new technology improves the power/performance ratios.The processing to be done by the SDP is a major ICT challenge. The major computational challenge is in the “imaging” process, more specifically, in reconstructing a faithful image of the sky from the “visibility” data received by the SDP element.The purpose of this call for tender is to provide tools, in the form of a Domain Specific Language, a compiler and an optimiser, which will support this flexible and optimising system.