Written by Laura Glitsos Thursday, 17 September 2009 11:14
IBM was both excited and proud to announce a partnership with Western Australia’s International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) today, according to IBM managing director of Australia and New Zealand, Glen Boreham.
“We’re also particularly proud to be of the West and the development of this incredible project,” he said.
“Just to give you a perspective on the significance of the project, IBM worked with NASA 40 years ago to put a man on the Moon and the amount of data that will need to be absorbed and analysed is, in our view, equivalent in its significance and technological challenge as the Moon shot.
“The Apollo 11 mission had less computing power than you have in your mobile phone today.
“In contrast the SKA will require the computing power equivalent of bringing together over one billion personal computers. The amount of data is one Exabyte per day, the equivalent of one thousand million USB sticks that we carry in our pockets.”
Minister for Science, Innovation and Commerce Troy Buswell said in its first hour alone, the SKA will generate more information than currently held in the entire World Wide Web.
He also emphasised the significance of the memorandum of understanding between IBM and ICRAR as aiding WA’s bid to host the SKA and developing a reputation as a hub of radio astronomy expertise.
“This information, along with the material captured by ASKAP, will be some of the most valuable radio astronomy information ever collected and will help us understand how the universe came to exist and evolve to its current state.”
ICRAR director Professor Peter Quinn said the collaboration is important because the “colossal” amounts of data require spectacular computing power to be of any use.
“It’s about extracting the knowledge from the data,” Prof Quinn said.
“These are the systems science will need to be able to look back into the history of the universe and ask the important questions.”
I am curious to be told of any projects on this scale / area of expertise IBM have recently been involved in- recently being in the last 10 years. Do they really have what it takes? I have the best wishes for it! Probably some more information would be useful though!