1. The Murchison Widefield Array Correlator
- Author
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Justin C. Kasper, Jamie Stevens, Lu Feng, J. Riding, Martin Bell, Ron Remillard, J. S. B. Wyithe, Joseph E. Salah, A. Roshi, Rachel L. Webster, K. S. Srivani, Frank H. Briggs, Robert F. Goeke, Lincoln J. Greenhill, Natasha Hurley-Walker, Andrew Williams, A. Ewell-Wice, Emil Lenc, Gianni Bernardi, Divya Oberoi, M. Waterson, Bryna J. Hazelton, Avinash A. Deshpande, Pietro Procopio, Nadia Kudryavtseva, Steven Tingay, Alan E. E. Rogers, Eric Kratzenberg, Robert J. Sault, Eric R. Morgan, Stephen M. Ord, Stephen R. McWhirter, Miguel F. Morales, Colin J. Lonsdale, Alan R. Whitney, John D. Bunton, Brian E. Corey, David Emrich, Thiagaraj Prabu, Luke Hindson, Ravi Subrahmanyan, Joseph Pathikulangara, David L. Kaplan, A. R. Offringa, B. B. Kincaid, D. Pallot, Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, M. J. Lynch, Brian Crosse, Daniel C. Jacobs, S. E. Tremblay, L. deSouza, Bartosz Pindor, Judd D. Bowman, Randall B. Wayth, David Herne, Daniel A. Mitchell, R. Koenig, Benjamin McKinley, David G. Barnes, Jacqueline N. Hewitt, Roger J. Cappallo, N. Udaya Shankar, N. D. R. Bhat, W. Arcus, Michael A. Clark, Christopher L. Williams, ITA, USA, AUS, Haystack Observatory, Cappallo, Roger J., Corey, Brian E., Kincaid, Barton B., Kratzenberg, Eric W., Lonsdale, Colin John, McWhirter, Stephen R., Rogers, Alan E. E., Salah, Joseph E., Whitney, Alan R., Ewall-Wice, Aaron Michael, Feng, Lu, Goeke, Robert F., Hewitt, Jacqueline N., Morgan, Edward H., Remillard, Ronald Alan, and Williams, Christopher Leigh
- Subjects
FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Aperture ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Murchison Widefield Array ,02 engineering and technology ,01 natural sciences ,Signal ,law.invention ,Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science (cs.CE) ,Telescope ,law ,0103 physical sciences ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,Astronomical interferometer ,Computer Science - Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science ,Field-programmable gate array ,Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Physics ,business.industry ,020206 networking & telecommunications ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Interferometry ,Space and Planetary Science ,Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,business ,Tera ,Computer hardware - Abstract
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Precursor. The telescope is located at the Murchison Radio--astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia (WA). The MWA consists of 4096 dipoles arranged into 128 dual polarisation aperture arrays forming a connected element interferometer that cross-correlates signals from all 256 inputs. A hybrid approach to the correlation task is employed, with some processing stages being performed by bespoke hardware, based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and others by Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) housed in general purpose rack mounted servers. The correlation capability required is approximately 8 TFLOPS (Tera FLoating point Operations Per Second). The MWA has commenced operations and the correlator is generating 8.3 TB/day of correlation products, that are subsequently transferred 700 km from the MRO to Perth (WA) in real-time for storage and offline processing. In this paper we outline the correlator design, signal path, and processing elements and present the data format for the internal and external interfaces., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in PASA. Some figures altered to meet astro-ph submission requirements
- Published
- 2015