WA technology company DownUnder GeoSolutions teamed up with ICRAR to search for signals from the first stars and galaxies.
ICRAR’s Director of Data Intensive Astronomy. Professor Andreas Wicenec, being interviewed on location at DownUnder GeoSolutions.
The company worked with ICRAR and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre to process observations of the early Universe from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in outback Western Australia. The project involved an enormous 200 terabytes of data—roughly equivalent to downloading all 73 episodes of Game of Thrones 1800 times.
The telescope observations were transferred to DownUnder GeoSolutions’ supercomputer in West Perth, where their software engineering team optimised the processing algorithms and delivered the processed data in record time.
DownUnder GeoSolutions has deep roots in software development and big data processing in the exploration for oil and gas. From its humble beginnings in a shed in Subiaco, the company now owns and operates some of the largest compute systems in the world.