Astron-IBM team to manufacture high-performance chips for radio telescope

Mumbai: Astronomy research organisation Astron is teaming up with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the world's computer technology services group, to design, engineer and manufacture customised, high performance analogue and mixed signal processing chips for its radio astronomy telescope project.

The high-performance, low energy-using chips will be used in thousands of antennas as part of Astron's project to build a radio astronomy telescope to probe evolving galaxies.

Astron, one of the world's leading astronomy research organisations set up by a global community of astronomers, is setting out to build the is building a new prototype radio telescope called SKADS / EMBRACE, a precursor for the world's largest radio astronomy telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope.

This extremely powerful survey telescope will have millions of antennas collecting radio signals, forming the equivalent of a 1 sq km collecting area, and spread over a huge surface area - over 3000 km wide - about the size of the continental United States. The SKA radio telescope will peep deep into space and look at evolving galaxies and dark matter, Astron said in a statement.
The Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany are involved in the design and development of SKADS / EMBRACE antenna tiles. More countries will be involved in the engineering and scientific testing of the SKADS / EMBRACE demonstrator.

A team of engineers from both ASTRON and the IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions will work in IBM's Burlington, Vermont, USA facility on engineering, design and manufacturing of the customised processors.

The first chip design and prototypes delivery is targeted for the first half of 2007. The second chip design and prototype delivery is planned for later on in the year. Financial terms are not being disclosed.