21 - 26 July 2013

Why Exascale Radio Astronomy? (PDF)

Science Goals

The topics covered by the next-generation of radio telescopes will touch upon cosmology, dark ages, epoch of reionization, galaxy evolution, dark energy, dark matter, general relativity, cosmic magnetism, and pulsars etc.

Simulations

1. Public Domain Codebases – List publically available codes. Explore opportunities for consolidating related and/or similar codes and make them widely available.
2. Standardization – Define data format standards for large datasets. Storage and distribution mechanisms.
3. Scalability – Make the codes scalable for large volume and/or high-resolution simulations.
4. Reusability – The simulation codes should be modular and reusable thus avoiding redundant rewrites usurping valuable resources.
5. Reproducibility – Simulations take massive resources and are hard to redo. There is clearly a need for defining mechanism third party validation of code and its results.
6. Algorithms – Discuss novel ideas for simulations algorithms used in other fields. Explore new trends in adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), N-body, hydro-dynamics, radiative transfers etc.
7. Modeling Telescope and Propagation Effects – Develop solutions for end-to-end simulations to help the overall design of current and future telescopes. Such simulations aid in comprehensive and realistic trade-off studies associated with noise in the data due to propagation effects.

Instrumentation

1. Digital Signal Processing (Software Correlators, Beam Formers)
2. Real-time Adaptive Imaging
3. Calibration

Data Processing/Analyses

1. Processing Pipelines
2. Analysis Pipelines
3. Radio Frequency Interference Excision
4. Strategies for Massive Data Acquisition, I/O, Storage

Software Challenges

1. Centralized Software Ecosystem – Standardized environments for development of peta- and exascale class simulation suites for end-to-end modeling scientific domain, instrumentation effects; data processing and analysis pipelines and software-based instrumentation.
2. Hardware, Programming Models and Algorithms – Discover optimal and long-term solution for ensemble of architectures and languages/models best suited to represent the underlying algorithms.
3. Exascale Risk Assessment and Mitigation – Evaluate immediate and long-term effects of disruptive technologies due to exascale initiative on the overall growth of scientific research and devise mitigation strategies.
4. Power Estimate and Modeling – Measure power budgets and work with vendors to lower expenditure.
5. Standardization and Cohesion of modules used for complex simulation. Validated ensembles of codebases used for high-resolution simulations of scientific domains.
6. Access to domestic and international supercomputing test-beds – Expand existing mechanisms for seamless use of participating facilities.
7. In-situ Visualization and Analysis. Standard and highly efficient framework to visualize and analyze exascale process at various stages and dynamically feedback decisive decisions.

Outreach and Training

Continue the outreach through conferences, training and deployment of publically available components of the ERA eco-system.

White Paper

The output of the meeting will be a comprehensive white paper that will cover extensive data challenges and their impact on current and future experiments in radio astronomy. The white paper will consolidate expert suggestions and solutions in wide range of areas.

Important Dates