1. 1 © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Ultra High-speed Telecommunication Requirements for the SKA Peter Elford Business Development manager, Higher Education and Research pelford@cisco.com

2. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 2 Where are the traffic flows and their sources and sinks ? What are the size of the traffic flows ? Over what distance do the traffic flows travel ? What are the interfaces into/out of sources and sinks ? Will the requirements change over time ? Drives flexibility and growth design considerations What tradeoffs are possible between network/compute/storage ? What is the cost of bandwidth ? Do you own the network infrastructure or are you buying services ?

3. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 3 SKA is still largely a “science project” Networking requirements are still TBD/TBC... many estimates Lots of focus on SKA2... vs. SKA1, and a ~50 year operational life The next 2-3 years will transform SKA into an engineering project Challenge will be balancing science vs. engineering Role of industry seems clear “Many of the SKA’s characteristics can only be delivered if new technologies are developed specifically for the SKA, and use is made of technologies constantly being renewed and developed in industry such as high performance computing and high speed telecommunications transmission systems” “Industry will play a crucial role in the delivery and through ‐ life support of the SKA technologies and infrastructure. The scale of the SKA, and the need to produce components, requires industry engagement on a scale unprecedented in radio astronomy. The involvement of organisations with experience and expertise in delivering demanding technological specifications within a production cost envelope will be essential.”

4. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 4

5. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 5 Timing Science Computation Facility Sensor (00’s – 000’s) Science Custom Built Computer (1) NREN (~150) Remote, RFI Quiet Major City Data Centre (1) Signal Processing Facility Data Objects World Public Internet (1) Real time, Uni-directional Data Flow Analysis, Science Operations Control Power SCADA Multiple network needs Integration...... at least at layer 1 ? Obvious North-South and East-West flows The big network is BIG...

6. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 6 Science Computation Facility Signal Processing Facility Remote, RFI Quiet Major City Mostly Campus/Metro (5-180 km) and Continental Long Haul for SKA2 (up to 3,000 km) Long Haul (100’s of km) Data Centre (10’s of m) Distance Bandwidth

7. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 7 Multiple dish types Physically very different Each type captures collects different frequencies Dishes can have two sensors Single Pixel Feed (SPF) Phased Array Feed (PAF) Dish (High) Dense Aperture Array (Med) Sparse Aperture Array (Low)

8. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 8 SKA Phase 1 Possible Configuration SKA Phase 2 Possible Configuration

9. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 9 Dishes: Core: 20% Inner: 30% Aperture Arrays: Core: 30% Inner: 36%

10. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 10 180km

11. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 11 New Zealand.. Boolardy Station, MRO New Zealand

12. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 12 Sensor to Signal Processing Facility Sensor Bit Rate (Gbps) n Total Bandwidth (Tbps) Bit Rate (Gbps) n Total Bandwidth (Tpbs) Dish with SPF2425062163,000648 Dish with PAF9295045929~2,5002,322 AA-low1,21625030433,4402508,360 AA-midN/A0016,8002504,200 TOTAL35615,530 SKA1 SKA2 Sensor Bit Rate (Gbps) n Total Bandwidth (Tbps) Dish with PAF19203669 ASKAP

13. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 13 Signal processing needs to be located “close” to centre of dish/sensor array, but needs to be 10’s km away to avoid RFI (maybe 10-20km) Huge number of sensor connections means cost needs to be very low Fast less important than cheap... Many 10G vs. fewer 100G (say) Design needs to balance cost of fibre vs. deployment cost vs. cost of optics Fibre density will be challenging particularly for SKA2 Signal processor and sensors are both “custom-built” Granularity of data streams needs to be standardised (1G, 10G, 100G, ???) Per sensor transmission will be a bundle of data streams Most sensors are within “campus” short-haul distance of signal processing More distant sensors may need amplification Remote stations will have to be DWDM long hauled to signal processor Few remote stations means this will be a relatively

14. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 14 Signal Processing Facility to Science Computing Facility Very, very significant reduction in bandwidth Well within capabilities of commercial offerings in time required Many long haul DWDM systems with 80 channels of 100G = 8T SKA13 Tbps SKA2138 Tbps (?) ASKAP0.16 Tbps

15. © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 15 Internet Data Centre Data Centre Cloud (Industrial Computing) Cloud (Industrial Computing) Residential Broadband (FTTH) Residential Broadband (FTTH)

16. © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 16 Dell’Oro Ethernet Forecast 2011-2015 Vol. 17. No. 1 DELL'ORO GROUP *Average Sell Price

17. Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 17 Technology exists to meet requirement – just requires cost optimisation Driven by factors other than SKA Interface standards critical to support loose coupling and, through alignment with industry standards, cost minimisation Many forces driving telecommunications industry towards SKA-relevant capabilities and price points Unless a clever incremental approach can be identified, may have to build SKA2-ready passive infrastructure up front Very different networking architectures need to be applied to different elements of the SKA solution

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