Central Computer
Current plans for the SKA require the central computer’s processing speed to be more than 1,000 times that of the current fastest super-computer.
Today’s extreme supercomputers can process data at about 10**15 floating point operations per second (flops).
The flops measure required for the SKA (10**18) is equivalent to the number of stars in 3 million milky way sized galaxies.
The SKA central computer has the processing power of about 1 billion PCs.
The Mission
The SKA will scan the heavens to chart the Universe, push the limits of fundamental physical laws, and search for life.
The SKA will investigate the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen, and will have the ability to probe
physics in extreme environments:
- arrival times of pulses from radio pulsars;
- the exploitation of astrophysical masers;
- the sensing of magnetic fields in the Universe;
- and the possibility of life elsewhere.
There will be Nobel prizes in abundance.
If the SKA array were built on the moon, a lunar astronaut could attach it to a mobile phone and communicate with a base station on Earth without incurring any roaming charges.
Data communications
The dishes of the SKA will produce 20 times the global Internet traffic.
The Aperture Arrays in the SKA will produce 250 times the global Internet traffic.
Laid end to end, the fibre optic strands used in the SKA could circumnavigate the globe over 10 times.
If the raw data produced by SKA were saved it would require about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks per day.