Renowned Technology Giant to Provide Support for MeerKAT e-programme
Keith Campbell writes in S.A.'s ENGINEERING NEWS 26 July:
Global technology group Intel on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology and SKA South Africa to provide support for South Africa’s Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and MeerKAT radio telescope projects.
The SKA is a €1.5-billion international radio telescope project, and South Africa and Australia are the two countries shortlisted to host it. MeerKAT is intended as a precursor to the SKA and, should South Africa be selected as the site for the SKA, would be incorporated into the international instrument; if Australia is chosen, MeerKAT will operate in addition to the SKA.
The MoU covers the period 2011 to 2015 (when MeerKAT will be commissioned), but progress will be reviewed every six months.
“We are offering hardware and performance tools, such as compilers – software, which will help their [SKA] software,” explained Intel corporate VP and Europe, Middle East and Africa GM Christian Morales.
“The SKA needs one hundred times the level of performance that exists today in high performance computing,” he highlighted. “SKA South Africa also wants an evolutionary architecture, better connectivity in a high performance environment, better storage, more storage capacity and better security. But most important is smart performance. They want to process the data as fast as possible. That will accelerate research and allow astronomers to develop more rapid simulations.”
The specialised processing and analysis software that the MeerKAT and SKA will require will be developed by SKA South Africa and its international SKA partner agencies. Intel’s software will optimise the functioning of this specialist SKA software. The hardware that Intel will develop for SKA South Africa will be based on the company’s three-dimensional transistor technology.
“The MoU also covers marketing – that is, marketing the SKA to the youth, to get them interested in this iconic project,” he added. “The idea is to demystify maths and science, to promote maths and science and to get students to chose maths and science careers.”
SKA South Africa will be supported by a virtual team of Intel engineers and researchers, scattered around the world. Because a lot of Intel’s support will be in kind – with engineering teams of varying sizes working on different issues over differing time periods – it is not really possible to put a monetary value on it.
