Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Friday July 31 2015, @10:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the cue-'does-it-run-linux'-jokes dept.

China is planning another petaflop supercomputer, this time to support what will by next year become the world's largest radiotelescope.

The telescope itself, a 500 metre monster that's scooped into a hilltop in Guizhou, has been under construction since 2011.

This week, engineers began installing the 4,450 panels that will make up the FAST (Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope) facility, which the Middle Kingdom's Academy of Sciences reckons will be able to detect radio signals from more than ten billion light years' distance.

More importantly, its huge size will also mean FAST can pick up even fainter signals than those captured at today's biggest radiotelescope, the [300 metre] Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Xinhua reports that the instrument will be supported by Skyeye-1, a petaflop facility that'll connect to FAST with 100 Gbps links.

The Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CASICT), Dawning Information Industry Co and China (Guizhou) Skyeye Group will build what's to be called the Qiannan Super Computing Center in Guizhou.

FAST's daily peak demand is predicted to exceed 200 teraflops, with first stage storage of more than 10 petabytes, CASICT researcher Zhang Peiheng told the state-run news agency.

More information at Wikipedia; arXiv.org has the 2011 abstract and full PDF.


Original Submission

Related Stories

China Still Has Trouble Staffing the World's Largest Radio Telescope 15 comments

China still having trouble staffing up its mega-telescope

China has built a staggeringly large radio telescope in a remote part of the country, and, although it is the largest and most advanced instrument of its kind in the world, the country continues to have a difficult time staffing up the observatory.

Not only has the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST instrument, still failed to attract a chief scientist, according to the South China Morning Post the facility is also struggling to attract two dozen researchers to work onsite to maintain the instrument and analyze data collected there.

One problem is pay. According to the Post, astronomers interested in joining working there should speak fluent English and expect to work in the remote location on a long-term basis. (The telescope is located in southwest China's mountainous Guizhou Province.) Compensation for the job is meager, at least by Western standards—about 100,000 yuan, or $14,400 annually.

Previously: China Announces Petascale Supercomputer for FAST Radiotelescope
China Builds World's Largest Radiotelescope
China Begins Operating World's Largest Radio Telescope
China Can't Find Anyone Smart Enough to Run its Whizzbang $180M 500 Meter Radio Telescope

Related: Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory Saved From Uncertain Fate


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @10:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @10:40PM (#216558)

    Chinese lying liars are no good at anything except pretending. There is no Chinese petascale supercomputer because Murica always #1. Herpy derp derp derp derp.

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by bob_super on Friday July 31 2015, @10:40PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday July 31 2015, @10:40PM (#216559)

    Why do they spend so much taxpayer money on something so useless? If they pulled their noses out of their flawed "scientific" papers, they'd quickly notice the real beauty of the stars shining down on them from 6000 light-years away. And they could invest all that money in proper aircraft carriers instead.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @10:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @10:57PM (#216562)

    It seems like China and North Korea are always coming up with a bigger something. Lets just call it a Wang race, who's got the biggest wang?

  • (Score: 1) by ese002 on Friday July 31 2015, @11:55PM

    by ese002 (5306) on Friday July 31 2015, @11:55PM (#216577)

    After all these years. Meanwhile, they keep threatening to close the original. It seems the astronomy community believes that money is better spent on other projects. The Chinese dish looks like it will be more aimable, something which is a significant limitation of Arecibo Is this enough to make it worth building? Many seem to think Arecibo is not useful enough to keep *operating*.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday August 01 2015, @12:53AM

      by bob_super (1357) on Saturday August 01 2015, @12:53AM (#216595)

      This one has much better tracking capabilities than arecibo. Time on target must be important

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Saturday August 01 2015, @01:01AM

      by Adamsjas (4507) on Saturday August 01 2015, @01:01AM (#216599)

      Arecibo has a lot of problems.

      It is limited in its sky coverage and tracking capabilities due to the ancient technology used to slew the receiver reflector over the canyon. The canyon bowl surface is far from ideal, and not entirely stable. Wind, rain, and low elevation makes it a huge compromise.

      Long baseline arrays are a better, cheaper, more steerable solution.

    • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Saturday August 01 2015, @02:00PM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Saturday August 01 2015, @02:00PM (#216752) Homepage Journal

      Arecibo was built 52 years ago. Nuff said.