We would like to invite you to a BoF Session for the upcoming ISC’17 in Frankfurt (19-21 June), titled: “SKA: The Ultimate Big Data Project“.

This BoF is co-organised and co-chaired between Dr. Happy Sithole -Director of the Centre for HPC of South Africa, and Nicolás Erdödy – CEO, Open Parallel, New Zealand

The objective for this Session is to keep the momentum in placing SKA on the agenda of the Supercomputing Community, and thus ISC is one of the events that addresses developments around the world.

Hence we would like to keep the discussions on computing developments and Big Data to also include the SKA.

This BoF continues the discussion from diverse panels at the 6th Multicore World held in February 2017 in New Zealand

Abstract and General Information

The BoF is approved as a one hour session (5:00 pm – 6:00 pm, Monday 19th June 2017), that we plan to divide as follows:

Introduction:

17:00 – 17:15 hrs

Co-chairs Dr. Happy Sithole and Nicolás Erdödy

Dr. Andrew Ensor (Director of the New Zealand SKA Alliance)

François Kapp  (Sub-System Manager, Digital Backend, SKA South Africa)

Juan Carlos Guzmán (ATNF Software and Computing Group Leader at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS), CSIRO, Australia)

This part will be welcoming the audience and outlining the objective of the BoF.

Updates on Construction and Computing for SKA:

17:15 – 17:30 hrs

Dr. Miles Deegan, HPC specialist from the SKA Office (SKAO, UK) will present the latest on timescales, sizing and possible procurement approaches.

The aim is to brief the community on the status of the construction and what are the choices of computing being considered, giving the big data ideas from SKA’s perspective, and also technology requirements.

Panel Discussion

17:30 – 17:45 hrs

Processor manufacturers – industry

Representatives from OEMs will be invited for panel discussions and respond to a set of questions relating to big data.

Patricia Damkroger – INTEL

Eric Van Hensbergen – ARM

TBC –

Participation from the floor

17:45 – 18:00 hrs

General participation and debate including integrators and suppliers.

Debate, Q&A and contribution from the floor on what are the priorities for big data technology and techniques.