ASKAP

ASKAP is an array of 36 antennas, each equipped with a novel Phased-Array Feed (PAF) allowing the antennas to point in multiple directions simultaneously. The antennas are combined into a single telescope that can image 30 square degrees on the sky (the moon is half a degree across). These images are formed every few seconds and across 16,000 frequency channels.

At EuroHack17 the team focussed on the image processing, which is entirely managed by the ASKAPSoft pipeline that calibrates the data, before forming images, resampling, and deconvolving instrumental effects, and finally extracting science artifacts from the final image products. This is a huge computational and data challenge and the pipeline is currently operating on a Cray XC30 Supercomputer operated by the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth Western Australia. In particular, the most time-consuming processes in ASKAPsoft were ported to the GPU: grinding, degrading and CLEANing.

Final presentation