When it’s built, the Square Kilometre Array will be the world’s largest radio telescope. Then, when it goes online, it will spit out one million terabytes of data each day — and IBM is trying to make a computer which can handle it.
To give some context, one million terabytes — or one exabyte — is twice as much information as there is traffic on the internet in a single day. It’s an insane amount of data.
Which is why IBM has announced that it’s going to plough $US43 million into a supercomputer capable of handling the task. This thing will be unlike any other computer ever built — think nanophotonics, 3D chip stacking and phase change memory — and IBM has less than 12 years to make it a reality. Good luck, guys! [IBM]
Image: SKA