Summer Secondment Contributes towards Solutions for the SKA telescope using a dataflow-based resource allocation method
Ophélie, a French Ph.D. student from the Institut d'Electronique et des Technologies du numéRique (IETR) and the Institut national des sciences appliquées (INSA) Rennes, is contributing to the Rising Stars project. From 10 June to 17 August 2023 she collaborated with the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) branch of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), located at the Marshfield site in Sydney.
The main goal of both teams is to provide solutions for the exascale radio telescope Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA project aims to construct the world’s largest radio telescope, encompassing a square kilometer of effective collecting area. It will comprise numerous antennas and dishes with data routed to the on-site Central Signal Processor (CSP) for initial front-end processing. Subsequently, the data will be transmitted via dedicated long-haul fiber links to the Science Data Processors (SDPs), where it will be converted into data d images suitable for radio astronomers.
To efficiently handle the vast volume of real-time acquired data while generating high-quality output images, optimizing the execution of applications on their parallel architecture becomes a fundamental objective. Ophélie is developing the Simulator of the Science Data Processor (SimSDP), a dataflow-based resource allocation method designed for multi-node heterogeneous target architectures.
The SimSDP project is seamlessly incorporated into the Parallel and Real-time Embedded Executives Scheduling Method (PREESM) (For more information, visit the website: https://preesm.github.io/). This tool accepts an application's dataflow graph and a hierarchical parallel architecture model as input and produces multi-node multicore code as output. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, Ophélie described a dataflow-based Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) filter.
The integration of RFI filters into the SKA backend is crucial for maintaining the accuracy of astronomical data by reducing noise interference. These filters are employed multiple times in the radio telescope backend to safeguard components, select desired frequency bands, mitigate interference, and adapt to FI fluctuations, ensuring optimal performance and signal quality.
One of the most memorable aspects of my secondment was the opportunity to work alongside some of the brightest minds in the field of radio astronomy. Sydney provides a unique and inspiring environment for research and collaboration
Ophélie is currently writing a scientific article, the product of collaboration on the SimSDP project. To provide additional information, Ophélie presented a colloquium at CSIRO ATNF. You can access the presentation through this link: https://webcast.csiro.au/#/videos/2662af38-cf0c-4dcc-8a7a-99cce18c233b or https://www.atnf.csiro.au/ATNF-DailyImage/archive/2023/12-Jul-2023.html
