RadioNet FP7 Joint Research Activity The UniBoard RadioNet FP7 Joint Research Activity Arpad Szomoru, JIVE Contract no. 227290

Overview Some history, background Motivation Project setup Current state Future...

RadioNet FP7 RadioNet-FP7 has ~ 20 partners: all of the major radio astronomy facilities and the laboratories involved in technology development 10 M€ over 3 years Has started January 2009

3 decades of cooperatio, recording on tapes, central supercomputer, made to play tapes TODO: is animation quick enough?

Miyun 50m Irbene 32m Sardinia 64m Yebes 40m Kunming 40m

EVN2015 roadmap Science case: http://www.evlbi.org/publications/publications.html Some highlights: Nature of starburst/AGN in cosmological fields The fate of black holes/radio quiet AGN Jet physics close to the event horizon (VSOP2) Determining star burst activity, resolving SNR’s The accretion physics in transient radio sources The detailed 3D kinematics of star formation The nature of the ISM in active galaxies Fundamental distances from astrometry Pulsar astrometry Monitoring spacecraft in the solar system

Next generation correlator Requirements set by EVN2015 science case Multiple data streams of 10 - 100 Gbps 32 stations, or at least more than 16 Multiple bit representation High bandwidth at higher frequency Calls for a hundredfold more powerful correlator Comparable to EVLA correlator Similar size as some (other) SKA pathfinders FPGA vs software Software correlators could be intermediate solution Distributed correlation attractive in Europe WSRT APERTIF system; similar needs

Software correlators FX software correlation: EVLA Small number of complex operations Easy to implement in software Better accuracy with floating-point EVN MarkIV 16 stations, 8 bands, 4 pols, 32 spectral pts, 1 Gb/s 1.8 TFlops EVLA 27 stations, 4 bands, 4 pols, 128 spectral pts, 32 Gb/s ~150 TFlops So a top 10 supercomputer can do this!

APERTIF project Phased Array Feeds for 12 of 14 Westerbork 25 m dishes 8 x 9 dual polarized Vivaldi arrays 25 beams, 300 MHz bandwidth, full Stokes Aeff/Tsys > 100 m2/K (Ntel=14 ha=0.75 Tsys=50 K) 8 deg2 Field of View Frequency range: 1000 – 1750 MHz

APERTIF prototype APERTIF prototype One dish fully dedicated to PAF Stand alone system (so far) 8 x 7 x 2 elements Vivaldi array Dual polarisation 60 Receiving chains Frequency range 1.0 – 1.7 GHz 30 MHz bandwidth Element separation: 10 cm (l/2 @ 1.5 GHz) Data recording backend (6.7 s) Output is full covariance matrix

Measured compound beam

First FPA synthesis image using Digestif and WSRT

First version (2006): CORFU Or, correlator of the future (or, a very nice island in Greece) An investigation into: Software correlator on a commodity hardware cluster Grid-based distributed software correlator Software correlator on integrated cluster, commodity or specialized (e.g. Blue Gene) Hardware correlator using new technologies (e.g. IBM Cell Processor Architecture) FPGA based hardware correlator “Traditional” ASIC based correlator.

Second version (2007): Uniboard A multi-purpose scaleable computing platform for Radio Astronomy FPGA-based processing platform Put as much computing power and as much I/O as possible on a as generic as possible board (Pogrebenko melt-down criterion) Several applications: Correlator (EVN, Apertif) Pulsar machine Digital backend Participants: JIVE, ASTRON, INAF, Bordeaux, Orleans, Manchester, KASI

FPGA based correlation Several high-end FPGAs/board Few Tops per board Current EVN correlator on 1 board Next generation correlator would require several racks Power consumption of several 10s of kW compared to MW range for supercomputers Rapid high level development possible e.g. Simulink (CASPER Berkeley)

Project setup Hardware development + three separate applications (in fact four) Concentrate efforts, minimize interdependencies Ensure al least one FTE for duration of project at main institute More than 50% matching contribution from partners Hardware: ASTRON + BORD + KASI Correlator: JIVE, ASTRON + BORD Digital Backend: INAF + BORD Pulsar Binning (+ RFI mitigation) : UMAN + UORL

Project status, activities to date Most manpower in place Regular telecons (started November 2008) to determine technical demands of different applications Regular Jive-Astron meetings Kickoff meeting in Dwingeloo February 26-27 Several draft design and use-case documents on wiki Hardware design (nearly) finalised Negotiations with Xilinx and Altera finished

Hardware selection Both Xilinx and Altera now use 40 nm Availability Price Layout

Correlator construction kit

And what about ExBox? Expandable Box for X-correlation JIVE/ASTRON proposal to NWO Build prototype FPGA EVN/APERTIF correlator Using LOFAR expertise and technology Backplane with several boards Matching funds for UniBoard First proposal deemed “excellent” No money Second proposal “excellent” as well Funded at half the requested amount

Next 13 months In place: Hardware decision has been made Funtional design document digital receiver Hardware, software design and use-case documents Realistic system design: flexible, multi-purpose, powerful, compact Hardware decision has been made Board design and implementation (2009) Production first half 2010 Firmware design and (partial) implementation Basic control software, first version correlator control software Firmware repository

The future: possible applications Next generation EVN correlator APERTIF beamformer APERTIF correlator Digital receiver Pulsar binning machine (EPTA) Next gen. Korean e-VLBI correlator Validation platform broadband digitization Low frequency resolution correlator Next gen. IRAM demonstrator correlator Solar interferometer Next gen. Chinese e-VLBI correlator prepSKA correlator effort

Longer term How does UniBoard fit in with the SKA timeline? 2012 pathfinders complete <2015 pathfinder science >2015 phase 1 science