Technical computing provider SGI has announced that iVEC and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have chosen it to provide the massive data management infrastructure at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.
The centre is part of the Australian Government Super Science Initiative to support the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio astronomy facility.
The Pawsey Centre will process huge volumes of data. The two largest generators of data are expected to be the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), Australia's largest and most capable radio telescope ever constructed, and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) project, which studies the signals from the dynamic radio sky as well as measurements of the Sun and heliospheric plasma.
These initiatives are expected to expand understanding of the universe and drive technological development worldwide. It is anticipated that these two projects combined will generate eight petabytes of data each year, all of which will flow through the Pawsey Centre.
When adding in data from other research areas, such as geothermal modelling and rock characterisation, iVEC forecasts supporting data volumes at approximately 10 petabytes annually for the foreseeable future. To manage such volumes, CSIRO selected an SGI InfiniteStorage and SGI UV 2000-based solution to address the scale and cost-efficiency requirements for a project of this magnitude.
'iVEC is committed to ensuring Australia maintains its place as a world leader in research and scientific computing, and the Pawsey Centre is a critical pillar in this strategy,' said Neil Stringfellow, iVEC's executive director.
'SGI's storage and data analysis infrastructure is a vital component of the Pawsey infrastructure. In particular the SGI UV 2000 visualisation system, with its very large shared memory capability, will enable our researchers to manipulate their data in a completely new way, leading to the potential for new insight and ambitious analysis.'
