The institute will make the hosting capabilities of the D-ALiX Data Processing Center available to the ASTRO POC project, a pioneering initiative that will transform the observation of the cosmos from the Canary Islands.
The Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables (ITER) has signed a contract with the Canary Islands company Light Bridges for the implementation of the high performance computing infrastructure of the ASTRO POC project in the D-ALiX Data Processing Center.
ASTRO POC is a public-private initiative that aims to install an astrophysical computing infrastructure, taking advantage of the images obtained from the exceptional quality of the sky of our archipelago. The infrastructure, operated by Light Bridges, will process the astronomical images obtained in telescopic facilities, located, among others, at the Teide Observatory of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), for subsequent use by the international research community. The telescopes will operate robotically, capturing high-resolution images of the sky in various spectral bands. The observation process will generate a voluminous amount of digital data that will need to be stored, processed and analyzed for later use by international researchers.
The D-ALiX Data Processing Center will play a crucial role in providing housing for high-performance, low-power storage systems and GPU-based processing equipment that will enable the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques to speed up the scientific processing of this wealth of digital information.
Light Bridges’ scientific director and IAC affiliated researcher, Miquel Serra-Ricart, explains that “The projects require fast and accurate processing of a huge amount of astronomical data. The information will be used in various fields of astronomy, from the detection and characterization of asteroids for planetary defense, to the discovery and tracking of exoplanets or the search for optical counterparts to large energetic explosions in the Universe”.
This is a pioneering project for the creation of a world reference center for computational astronomy, allowing a large number of universities and international research centers to have access to exceptional scientific resources, generated in the Canary Islands, which will contribute to their research work in multiple fields of astrophysics and applied technologies.
This contract between ITER and Light Bridges aims at the continuous improvement of the DPC infrastructure and, more importantly, the possibility of developing joint R&D projects in the field of storage and processing of large volumes of information.
The project is privately financed at the risk and peril of its investors, mostly from the Canary Islands. This contract underlines the commitment of both organizations to excellence in research and technological advancement, and represents a significant step towards achieving an overall beneficial objective, declared to be of general interest, such as the realization in the Canary Islands of activities related to research and innovation in astrophysics and its instrumentation. “We are looking forward to developing joint projects, using the new computing infrastructure, DASE, introduced by VAST DATA and the Lenovo and Nvidia systems with which we collaborate,” Light Bridges said.
Likewise, an increase in the interest of economic operators in the astrophysics and space sector is expected, with benefits for technological innovation in areas such as computing, GPU processing, robotics and control software, ITER’s areas of excellence.
