Focus on
Software for telescopes surges ahead BY ANIM VAN WYK (SKAO)
Awarding 41 contracts worth approximately €151.7 million, the SKA Observatory (SKAO) has leaped out of the blocks since the approval of construction just over a year ago.
singleorganicway,explainsNickRees, head of computing and software at the SKAO. The software leadership adopted a tailored version of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). The framework is a setofworkowpatternswidelyused in industry.
Among others, the SKAO’s tender software project manager, Maurizio subcommittee most recently endorsed Miccolis. therstpartofthemanagementand This goal is to enable the SKAO In September 2018, the SKAO started integration of the SKA-Low telescope’s community to achieve transformational implementing SAFe processes with eldstations(81million)aswellasboth science.Thesoftwaresrstsignicant four development teams. Labelled PI0 telescopes’ synchronisation and timing trial awaits in 2024 when four telescope (Programme Increment Zero), more activity management (€1.5 million). dishes and six low-frequency antenna teams joined with each following PI, Major contracts for the manufacturing stations are due to come online. By including ones from other design of the SKA antennas and dishes should then, the software must demonstrate a consortia with software responsibilities. be awarded soon. basic ability to control the telescopes, Eventually, two Agile Release Trains – Software procurement received the bulk including the capacity to combine team-of-teams made up of three to of the contracts (23) and money (nearly signals from several antennas. nine people each – emerged: one for €100 million) committed so far. Under When construction concludes at the end Science Data Handling and Processing these contracts, at least 130 software of the decade, each telescope’s software (SDH&P) and the other for Observation, developers from nine countries are must process an average of 8 terabits of Monitoring, and Control (OMC). Later, a working to ensure the SKA telescopes data per second before distributing it to Services train was added. deliver world-class science. science users worldwide. The Services train consists of enablers TheSKAOrecentlysigneditstwonal Populated by trains & planets that carry out activities in support of software contracts with India’s National the other trains’ work, such as setting Though the SKAO nalised its software Centre for Radio Astrophysics and Swiss up the software repository and testing procurement in a speedy nine months, company Cosylab. Their developers join system. Team Planet (an amalgamation the groundwork for it was laid years those from the Netherlands, Portugal, ofplatform & andnetwork) & isan ago.From2013-4,twodierent South Africa, Australia, Italy, China, enabler that provides the hardware, international consortia steered the and the United Kingdom working on platforms, as well as the networks that design of the SKA software as part of the project. connect them. the telescopes’ pre-construction phase. “Concluding the contracting of all our The SAFe way of working is One consortium – consisting of software suppliers is a big moment, inherentlyexible. members from seven countries led by but at the same time, it is only an India – designed the Telescope Manager intermediatesteptotheultimate goal, “Three trains may not be our element. The other consortium brought says the congurationforever,saysRees.&In together almost 40 institutions from SKAO’s future, we may transform them into two 11 countries to plan the Science Data trains, one dedicated to each telescope. Processor, with the United Kingdom Currently, this is unnecessary as both in charge. telescopes require most of the software The consortia passed their critical design reviews in April 2018 and May 2019, respectively. The Observatory then started planning for construction by prototyping software development processes.
underdevelopment. Working as trusted partners
Along with the SAFe methodology, relational contracts form the backbone of the SKAO’s software development. The Observatory uses the fourth version “We realised that we didn’t want to of a suite of standard contracts called maintain the separate consortia but New Engineering Contracts 4, or NEC4. mergeeortstobuildthesoftwarein a aim to reduce the complexity and These
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