ASKAP Signal Processing Overview DIFX Users and Developers Meeting Dr. Grant Hampson | ADE Team Leader 4 September 2012 CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science
ASKAP Overview 36x12-metre antennas 188-port PAF receiver Digitisation 630 baselines 188-port PAF receiver “Tuneable” over 0.7-1.8GHz Digitisation Provides at least 300MHz processed BW 30deg2 FoV 36-dual pol. Beams (varies with frequency) Carries through to correlator Tied array outputs also DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
ASKAP Differences BETA (Eng. Test Array) Dual heterodyne receiver ADC at antenna Dragonfly-2 digitiser (IF sampling) Redback-2 DSP board inside ATCA chassis Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs ADE (ASKAP Design Enhancements) RFOF (RF over fibre) from PAF to central site All digital electronics in central site Dragonfly-3 digitiser (direct sampling) Redback-3 DSP board in 1U chassis Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGAs DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
Digital Back-end Blocks Digital Receiver 36-antennas 192-ports 2x16-bits 300 MHz =66Tbps =6600 x 10G Coarse Filter Bank PAF Cross Connect PAF ADC Phase Switch Channel Select 192 Beamformer Array Covariance Matrix 36-antennas 2x36-beams 2x16-bits 300 MHz =25Tbps =2500 x 10G Fine Filter Bank 1 Beamformer Coarse Delay Fringe Correlator 1 Antenna Cross Connect Long Term Accumlator Correlator 36 Tied Array DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
PAF Electronics – The Domino The “Domino” combines: Low noise amplifier RF filtering – defines 3 bands RF over SM fibre transmitter Each Domino contains electronics for 2 PAF ports: 1.8W power per port 250grams per port Backplanes provide power, control and monitoring Duplex LC/APC connections to MTP elite, connect RF to central site DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
ADE Backend – Digital Receiver Upgrade to Xilinx Series-7 FPGAs Kintex-325 FPGAs (840-DSP/RAM) Contains first stage coarse filter bank Direct sampling ADCs NatSemi 12-bit 1600MSPS ADCs Avago optical MiniPODs Multimode 120Gbps modules FPGA connect directly at 10Gbps 1U chassis packaging No front or rear to boards 16 ports per 1U ~10W per PAF port DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
ASKAP (BETA) Processed Spectrum Sampled Bandwidth = 384MHz Processed Bandwidth = 304MHz Stage 1 filterbank 384MHz 768MHz Beamformer Second Nyquist zone First-stage filterbank output: 304 x 1MHz channels oversampled by 32/27 Stage 2 filterbank 54 x 18.52kHz fine channels (= 1MHz) sent to the correlator Second-stage filterbank output: 64 x 18.52kHz channels per 1MHz critically sampled Critically sampled filterbank DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
Frequencies? Can’t have a single 768MHz channel – need to channelise Beamformer requires ~1MHz resolution to apply weights RFI – can remove frequencies that are troublesome – few MHz Allows looking at frequencies that are well separated Allows different simultaneous zooms on the same frequencies Zooms Fine delays/fringe stopping require ~100kHz to avoid smearing at band edges To avoid aliasing near edges of 1MHz channels, and frequency rolloff The 1MHz channels are oversampled by 32/27=18.5% Tied Array / VLBI Fine channels are stitched back together to form larger BWs (e.g., 16MHz) To avoid aliasing and frequency rolloff, the fine channels are planned to also be oversampled Don’t require sample rates to be a power of 2 DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
ADE DSP: Beamformer and Correlator Common hardware platform Xilinx Kintex-420 Series-7 FPGAs ~1680 DSP/RAM per FPGA 2 DDR3 modules @ 1066MTS 120Gbps optical transceiver Direct 10Gbps from FPGA to optics transceivers simplifies design 1U chassis packaging No front or rear to boards 6 FPGAs per Redback board Use of optical backplanes Low capital cost – no power 1.5Tbps optical backplane Acts like “fixed” network switch Scalable and modular DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
Why use FPGAs for Beamforming? 10k multipliers per Redback-3 board (@300MHz = 3Tera ops/sec) We are using 36x6=216 Redback-3 boards in beamformer Beamforming, ACM and Fringe Large processed BW – 300MHz with 36 dual pol beams is significant Large bitwidths – linear up to beamformer output – preserving dynamic range Lots of IO – guaranteed IO and lots of it Power efficient Why not use a GPU? Network switch is a killer: 6600 input ports + 6600 output ports size, price, power, cabling, ??? Are GPU’s IO constrained for such an application? How many GPUs per PC? DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
Why use FPGAs for Correlator? We are using 75 Redback-3 boards in correlator (225TOPS) Why not use a GPU? Network switch: 2500 input ports + 2500 output ports size, price, power, cabling, ??? Processing still very regular Correlation cells are not that different to beamformers (CMAC with DDR3) Have to also manage Tied Array outputs, inverse filterbank The balance of on-chip resources: logic, RAM, DSP units along with the high IO bandwidth and relatively low power consumption still makes the FPGA a compelling choice in obtaining a cost effective solution for these types of processing applications. DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
My two bits ... For single pixel feeds ASKAP ~1 Peta Op Data rates going up 10G to 25G 10GbE pretty slow 100GbE needs to become standard Density going up Better cooling My two bits ... For single pixel feeds No beamformer Correlator is so much smaller Pretty simple – GPU? However, single pixel feeds can be wider BW Maybe a factor of 10 larger? How many more dishes? Issues with GPUs??? Network switch ports and BW Watching bit widths carefully Conversion fixed-floating point Data rates into GPU cards? Density of processing? Software tools Issues with FPGAs??? Communications Programming Software tools Fixed interconnections? Compilation times Test benches DIFX Users and Developers Meeting | Grant Hampson | 25 Sep 12
We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Thank you CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Dr. Grant Hampson ADE Team Leader t +61 2 9372 4647 e grant.hampson@csiro.au w www.csiro.au/cass CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science