University of Manchester installs 182 processor COBRA cluster computer with Wulfkit interconnect

The Lovell Telescope is currently undergoing a major two million UK pound upgrade to increase its sensitivity and accuracy. The addition of the COBRA supercluster, which is capable of processing data coming from the telescope in real time, will enable scientists at the Observatory to take full advantage of the increased accuracy of the radio telescope.

Jodrell Bank is the world leader in pulsar research. Its astronomers have discovered three-quarters of the 1,400 currently known pulsars. Pulsars are rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars that produce beams of radio emission. These emissions enable scientists to study the rotation of a pulsar with great precision. Pulsar timing has broad application in astrophysical experiments, from studying the internal structure of neutron stars and the properties of the interstellar medium to testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Unfortunately the radio pulses suffer dispersion in the interstellar medium, resulting in the broadening of the pulses, which limits the accuracy of the timing and any subsequent measurement. COBRA will remove this broadening, using 'coherent dedispersion' across the wide observing bandwidth of 100MHz, greatly increasing the sensitivity and timing precision over existing equipment. The supercluster computer effectively provides a new generation of general-purpose digital radio-astronomical receiver that can be used to perform any function of existing instruments simply through changes in the software.

In addition to pulsar observing, COBRA will be used for other online observations, for example methanol emission lines from astronomical objects.

Off-line uses of COBRA include pulsar searching and hydrodynamical simulations of astrophysical phenomena. Pulsar searching involves analysis of recorded data, looking for patterns that identify previously undiscovered pulsars. "COBRA will enable us to search for pulsars in binary systems where the pulsar orbits another star," said Dr. Michael Kramer, a pulsar researcher at the Observatory.

WulfKit is a combination of a Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) network interconnect card (NIC) developed by Oslo-based Dolphin Interconnect, and a powerful message-passing interface (MPI) developed by Scali, also located in Oslo. Very large clusters can be built and managed using WulfKit. Other notable installations include a 256-processor supercluster at the University of California-Santa Cruz, a 182-processor supercluster at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), and a 192-processor system at the Center for Parallel Processing in Paderborn, Germany.

COBRA is made possible by a grant from the Joint Research Equipment Initiative (JREI) administered by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).