Square Kilometer Array (SKA) South Africa, a business unit of the country’s National Research Foundation, has collaborated with ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and IBM, to research computer systems on a fast low power exascale. ,
The four-year collaboration will witness the companies’ research to develop technologies for handling data that will be produced by the SKA.
The SKA, which claims to be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, is expected to help in understanding the history of the universe.
When completed, the SKA will collect Big Data from deep space containing information that dates back to the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago.
The aperture arrays and dishes of the SKA will produce 10 times the global internet traffic, along with the power to process all of the data.
In 2012, ASTRON and IBM launched a public-private partnership called DOME, to develop a rudimentary IT roadmap for the SKA that includes a user platform where organisations can investigate emerging technologies.
