We’ve helped pave the way for scalable, high-performance systems that will power radio telescopes for decades to come.
Sean Stansill, HPC Software Engineer, nAG

Overview

The SKA Observatory (SKAO) is an ambitious, €2 billion international endeavour to build the world’s largest radio telescope arrays, capable of transforming humanity’s understanding of the universe. Behind this monumental effort lies an equally groundbreaking challenge: processing petabytes of raw data every day into high-resolution astronomical images.

 

nAG’s High-Performance Computing (HPC) software engineer, Sean Stansill and the nAG HPC team, plays a pivotal role in making this possible. Their work ensures the seamless transformation of vast volumes of data into science-ready data products, supporting the SKAO’s mission to accelerate discovery in radio astronomy and gravitational wave science.

Image Copyright: SKAO

Challenge: Turning an Ambitious Concept into an Operational Reality

While the SKA telescopes have been envisioned since late 1980s, the computing infrastructure required to realise them only recently became feasible. Described as “software telescopes,” the SKA project does not rely on a single giant dish. Instead, it combines data from hundreds of smaller dishes and thousands of antennas using complex software pipelines. The computing demand is unprecedented — the two systems must sustain read/write speeds around 8 terabytes per second, non-stop.

The real bottleneck? I/O performance. Unlike embarrassingly parallel tasks, radio astronomy workflows require tightly synchronised data movement across many nodes. This choreography is dictated by the physics of how radio waves are processed. Efficiently managing this scale and complexity is a frontier problem in modern HPC.

Solution: Engineering Scalable, Future-Proof HPC Software Pipelines 

nAG HPC Services are playing a significant role in the Science Data Processing (SDP) phase where raw telescope data becomes scientifically useful. Sean Stansill, nAG HPC Engineer working on the SKAO project has contributed to:

  • Development and integration of MSv4, a next-generation data format poised to become the global standard for radio telescopes.
  • Enhancement of DP3, a calibration tool critical to ensuring scientific accuracy, now with distributed processing support for greater scalability.
  • Leading input on I/O architecture and performance optimisation during an international review consisting of 24 institutions.

He has also championed object storage — a mainstay in cloud computing — as a novel approach within HPC. Although unconventional in this domain, it offers the flexibility and scalability needed for SKAO’s evolving data landscape, reflecting a broader convergence of HPC and big data technologies.

Impact: Accelerating Science and Scaling the Future of Astronomy

Sean’s work ensures that SKA software runs not just effectively, but efficiently — squeezing maximum performance from existing infrastructure within a cost-conscious budget. One optimisation experiment revealed 4× speed improvements simply by doubling the node memory, a change with outsized performance benefits at minimal investment.

These advancements are not confined to code alone — they enable the SKAO to integrate data processing as a core part of the telescopes, freeing astronomers from manual workflows and fast-tracking discovery. From imaging black hole jets to verifying gravitational waves detected by LIGO, SKAO’s science goals will be made possible by the robust, scalable systems nAG engineers are building.

Image Copyright: SKAO Image Author: SKAO

Collaboration and Global Reach

This effort is deeply collaborative. Sean works not only within the SKAO team but also alongside counterparts at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). Weekly working groups ensure technical alignment and smooth software integration across continents.

Looking Ahead

As the SKAO prepares for full operations towards the end of the decade, the innovations taking place today are setting the standard for scientific computing tomorrow. nAG’s work is paving the way for resilient, high-performance data systems that will serve the radio astronomy community for decades.

We’ve helped pave the way for scalable, high-performance systems that will power radio telescopes for decades to come.
Sean Stansill, HPC Software Engineer, nAG

Key Takeaways

  • 8 TB/s I/O is needed – the SKAO’s HPC systems must continuously sustain these rates.
  • Global standards: MSv4 is becoming the benchmark format for radio astronomy worldwide.
  • Innovative architecture: Adoption of object storage marks a shift in HPC design for data-intensive workloads.
  • Scientific impact: From studying the cosmic down to understanding galaxy evolution, the SKAO’s discoveries depend on the Science Data Processor software that nAG’s experts are helping to develop.
  • Cost-effective performance: Hardware tuning yielded up to 4× efficiency gains with minimal investment.