PetaOp/Second FPGA Signal Processing for SETI and Radio Astronomy

Our group, the Center for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER), seeks to speed the development of radio astronomy signal processing instrumentation by designing and demonstrating a scalable, upgradeable, FPGA-based computing platform and software design methodology that targets a range of realtime radio telescope signal processing applications. This project relies on a small number of modular, connectible hardware components and open-source signal processing libraries which can be reused and scaled as hardware capabilities expand. "We have demonstrated the use of 10 Gb Ethernet packetization and switches to manage high-bandwidth inter-board communication. Using these tools, we have built spectrometers, correlators, beamformers, VLBI data recorders, and many other applications. Future directions for the development include a fully packetized scalable correlator, additional library and toolfiow development, and a next generation of modular FPGA-based hardware.