Donated Computing for Astronomy

As massive new radio telescope arrays such as ASKAP, MEERKAT, MWA and (coming soon) the SKA come on line, it is becoming more apparent than ever before that the future of astronomy is becoming inextricably tied to the need for colossal computing power, to process the raw data. 

For example, the data produced by ASKAP and the MWA is being handled by a large data processing centre run by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), located in Perth, which is also expected to handle the Australian SKA data when it begins streaming at the end of the decade. Yet, despite the capabilities of its own massive computer centre, ICRAR also recognises the savings it can make by utilising the power of idle home computers. This is generally called “Grid Computing” or “Distributed Computing.”  Maybe “Donated Computing” or “Volunteer Computing” would be just as accurate.

ICRAR makes it's “SkyNet” and “SkyNet Pogs” projects available using two distributed computing methods, to assist them with the analysis of the massive amounts of data produced by Australian and world-wide radio telescopes. Large chunks of data are broken down into small work units, which are then distributed to volunteer home computers for processing.

The Large Hadron Collider is another example of massive data output and much of the data processing of the results from it's experiments is outsourced to major computer centres throughout the world. Yet it, too, also uses the power of home computers - through LHC@home – as an LHC simulator to provide scientists with the best settings with which to carry out their exquisitely detailed experiments.

Other astronomy related computing projects include Cosmology@home, Milky Way@home , SETI@home and my personal favourite, Einstein@home, which searches for new pulsars and gravity waves. To date, forty-six contributors to the Einstein project have discovered new radio pulsars! 

These projects all share the BOINC project manager platform.

To run one or more of these projects, all you need to do is install the BOINC project management software, available at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/  and choose which scientific projects you want it to manage for you. That's about all it entails. It uses your computer's idle time and it runs in the background using the limits you set for it. It costs you almost nothing to donate some of the unused processing capacity from your computer for the benefit of scientific research and if scientists can reduce the data processing cost this way, they might have more money to spend on more sensitive telescopes.

I know that some MAS members tried ICRAR's “theSkyNet” (using Nereus) over the last few months and became disillusioned by the way it grabbed computer resources – particularly on older single processor machines. The BOINC project manager is not like that. You need not fear it eating up your computer resources, because you have complete control over  the resources you allocate to it. It is quite suitable for all home computer's, (Windows, Mac or Linux) no matter how old they are. I hope that more members will consider trying it, so they can donate their idle computer time to the advancement of astronomy. ICRAR has recognised the problems associated with Nereus and has now placed it's new SkyNet Pogs project onto the BOINC platform.

I hope you think about signing up to BOINC projects – 2.4 million people around the world can't be wrong - and when you do, don't forget to join the “Macarthur Astronomical Society” BOINC team!

This article was written for publication in the September Edition of "Prime Focus" magazine - the journal of Macarthur Astronomical Society.