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2013-11 SKA Organisation Announced Design Teams Print
December 2013

The International SKA Organisation has posted a press release on its website- Hundreds of the world's experts engaged in the final race for designing the largest radio telescope on earth. 

Announcement  4 November 2013, SKA Headquarters, Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK -   The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project enters a new era and takes a major step towards the start of the construction of the world’s largest radio telescope, after the announcement today of the teams who will be responsible for its final design. In total, more than three hundred and fifty scientists and engineers, representing 18 nations and drawn from nearly one hundred institutions, universities and industry have the challenging task to work on the critical detailed design phase which will usher in the most sensitive and powerful telescope ever devised.
 
See this for the full announcement: http://www.skatelescope.org/news/consortia-announcement/.
Compucon New Zealand is in the team for Central Signal Processing (CSP).  What is CSP?  The same press release provides this introduction:  The CSP is the central processing “brain” of the SKA. It converts digitised astronomical signals detected by SKA receivers (antennas & dipole (“rabbit-ear”) arrays) into the vital information needed by the Science Data Processor to make detailed images of deep space astronomical phenomena that the SKA is observing. It will also design a “non-image processor” in order to facilitate the most comprehensive and ambitious survey yet to find new pulsars and precisely time known pulsars.  The CSP consortium is led by David Loop of the NRC (National Research Council of Canada), Canada.


This link shows the organisations that are members of the CSP consortium.  http://www.skatelescope.org/skadesign/wp/csp/

Institutions involved in the CSP Consortium include:
 •Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia
 •International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Australia
 •Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
 •CISCO, Australia
 •National Research Council of Canada (NRC), Canada
 •Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), Canada
 •MDA Systems Ltd, Canada
 •Key Lab of Aperture Array and Space Application (KLAASA), China
 •Max Plank Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfRA), Germany
 •National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), India
 •National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), Italy
 •SELEX Electronic Systems, Italy
 •University of Malta, Malta
 •Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), The Netherlands
 •Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE), The Netherlands
 •Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC), The Netherlands
 •AUT University, New Zealand
 •Massey University, New Zealand
 •University of Auckland, New Zealand
 •Compucon New Zealand, New Zealand
 •Open Parallel Ltd, New Zealand
 •SKA South Africa, South Africa
 •Reutech Radar Systems (A Division of Reutech Limited), South Africa
 •Ingeniería de Sistemas para la Defensa de España (ISDEFE), Spain
 •Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain
 •IBM Zurich, Switzerland
 •Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), UK
 •University of Manchester, UK
 •University of Oxford, UK
 •Adaptative Array Systems Limited, UK
 •NVIDIA, USA
 •NASA JPL, USA