Recently, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), known as the "China Tianyan", received a new development: its data center has been successfully upgraded.
"The upgrade of the data center means that China Tianyan is one step closer to establishing three complete scientific research frameworks for observation, research, and data.
"China Tianyan", world's largest radio telescope, is located in the "Big Pot" deep in the mountains of Kedu Town, Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, in the karst hills that formed millions of years ago.
Its spherical reflective surface is equivalent to 30 football fields and is 138 meters vertical from bottom to top, surpassing the world's largest Huff Pyramid.
As a science and technology infrastructure involving astronomy, mechanics, materials, machinery, radio, IT and other fields, "China Tianyan" is not only the result of more than 20 years of struggle of Chinese scientists but also a breakthrough in the field of science and technology infrastructure in China.
The National Development and Reform Commission recently pointed out the scope of new types of infrastructure, among which innovative infrastructure refers to infrastructure with public welfare attributes that support scientific research, technology development and product development, and major scientific and technological infrastructure such as "China Tianyan" is undoubtedly a typical representative of new infrastructure.
Since its official launch on 11 January 2020, China Tianyan has discovered 132 high-quality pulsar candidates, of which 93 have been identified as newly discovered pulsars.
"FAST is currently the most sensitive radio telescope in the world, more than 2.5 times more sensitive than the American Arecibo telescope and 10 times faster than Arecibo, and is expected to maintain its leading position in the world for at least 20 years," said GENTLE.
China Tianyan generates huge amounts of data over time and as the research mission progresses, the demand for storage capacity and performance is growing. To this end, the National Astronomical Observatory has been promoting the construction of the FAST Research Data Center in recent years.
In the latest upgrade, the National Astronomical Observatory partnered with Inspur Storage to build a 30PB usable capacity, 50GB bandwidth astronomical big data platform with distributed storage AS13000G5 to support "China Tianyan" for astronomical big data storage, processing, and real-time analysis.
This time, the role of wave storage is not only to make "China Tianyan" "can fit" the data, but also to become the "accelerator" of astronomical big data analysis, and play a positive influence in the exploration of the unknown universe field.
In the "China Tianyan" project, Wave Storage ingeniously deployed H nodes for HPC and AI applications and M60 nodes for high-density scenarios in a distributed storage platform to achieve hierarchical storage of hot and cold data, and high-performance nodes to improve the efficiency of astronomical big data processing and analysis; high-density nodes to achieve a single node capacity close to 1PB, providing massive storage space; and free data flow between different levels of storage according to astronomical business needs, bringing more rapid research experience.
"China Tianyan" data center expert said, "We are very impressed by this cooperation with Wave Storage, which not only has hardcore products, but also professional production and delivery team. Even in exceptional circumstances such as the epidemic, Wave Storage was able to move the project forward to go live earlier than we had expected."
In the future, with the accelerated completion of the "China Tianyan" three complete scientific research frameworks of observation, research, and data, China's astronomical research strength is bound to rise to another level and showcase China's scientific research strength in the vast universe.
