Astrovision Australia will build the fastest supercomputer in the country using a high performance computing (HPC) environment comprised of Apple Computer’s Mac OS X-based Xserves and Xgrid computing software to cope with the huge amount of data spooling off a geostationary imaging satellite. It’s planned for launch next year.
AstroVision plans to establish the first live, continuous, high-resolution and true-color motion imagery and data of the Earth from a geostationary imaging satellite orbiting at 36,000km above the Equator. Astrovision will delivery the imagery via Apple’s QuickTime video platform.
AstroVision plans to provide their partners and customers with real-time imagery of a wide range of live events, including local weather, bushfire detection and tracking, shipping and air traffic on TV, on 3G mobile, and on the Internet. This project will be the first continous live color coverage of the Earth in history – using a patented approach and low-risk space-qualifed hardware derived from systems originally developed and flown for NASA.
More info here.
Garry Barker reports on this story for The Sydney Morning Herald, “It is being built for AstroVision Australia to process data from a satellite to be launched in 2007 into geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres above the equator, covering from India to Hawaii. AstroVision managing director Michael Hewins says Apple Australia is building the computer using Xserves and the Xgrid computing software in Tiger, QuickTime 7 to produce images and videos from space and the online distribution system.”
“AstroVision… plans to establish the first live, continuous, high-resolution, colour motion imagery and data of the Earth from a geostationary imaging satellite. Data processed in the supercomputer will be used to monitor weather and natural disasters, reduce bushfire and hail damage, improve coastal surveillance, and log navigational hazards for maritime and aviation industries.”
Full article here.
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Austrailians are cool.
Smart folk. They picked the simplest, straightest line from need to solution.
I wonder what kind of resolution will be visiable. Will all aircraft and ships at sea be easily tracked? This has the potential for very invasive monitoring.
Australia has the most beautiful women in the world. Painfully, shockingly beautiful. And now they are using the most beautiful, most powerful computing solutions as well.
God, I must move there someday soon.
Yeh-hehssssss. I too love Australian women. They make most American babes seem like Janeane Garofalo. Or Britney Spears without makeup. Hey, I keed the zit-covered!
No, seriously, I would move to Australia myself except for the poisonous frogs that can kill you in 3 seconds and the deadly spiders and the fact that the sharks and ‘gators practically run the country. No really, I once met a dingo that stunk so bad I nearly passed out and lost my flesh to him. It reminded me of de time I partied with Artie Lange. He smelled so bad I could have pooped on him and he wouldn’t have noticed!
Memo to Lange: That thing with the faucet above your head — it’s not just for sobering up. Yesssss.
Some of us get lucky and are married to an Aussie chicky-babe.
😀
ps Triumph: spiders and snakes aren’t really that much of an issue. They only hurt you if you hurt them. It’s the American/Japanese tourists you have to be careful of.
(yes, that’s a joke joyce)
How many XServe cluster will now be in the top 25 Super computers next year? I count 5 now
“It’s the American/Japanese tourists you have to be careful of.”
Uhh, lovey, I daresay we Americans have just been ‘punked’ . . . or ‘bitch-slapped’ . . . or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days.
notatotalsucker:
“Some of us get lucky and are married to an Aussie chicky-babe.
:D”
Ohh, I SO wish MDN would let you post a picture . . .
you lucky BASTARD!
I heard that Australia was once a prison.
^ Yes – a prison of LOOVVVVVE!!!
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“Some of us get lucky and are married to an Aussie chicky-babe.“
What the hell’s a “chicky-babe”?
An Australian baby chicken?
This system is not planned to be fully operational until 2007.
This is actually a set of seven separate clusters of 200 Xserves each (assuming Apple gets their act together so that by mid 2006 the Xserves of that time are about twice as fast as they are now — if not then the individual clusters will require more Xserves). Each cluster processes information from a single sensor on board the satellite. There clearly will be other computers (Macs are quite probable) running the SAN. The SAN will grow at approximate 21 TB a day [over 7.5 PB a year] — that is NOT a typo.
About Charlie’s concern. The resolution of the best sensor is 250 meters per pixel. The best possible inference under the best of conditions is about 16 meter objects (given perfect conditions, LOTS of post processing, and additional information from Low Earth Orbit satellites). You won’t see any “Enemy of the State” (movie) type pictures. Resolving sub meter objects (like people) will require optics so large they won’t be at geostationary orbits for decades to come.
The nice thing about this system is it will be truly real-time. The sensors take images once per second (or faster). The current weather satellites give images on the average of every 20 minutes (varying from every 6 minutes to every 3+ hours depending on conditions and type of scan). The downlink, processing and delivery to customers is anticipated to take less than 10 seconds.
So you really see the Earth as it really was just 5-10 seconds ago.
One last thing … the three primary sensors are in 33 bit RGB — so true color. The current geostationary satellites up there use red and infrared — no green or blue.
So do they mount the xServes upside down in the racks?
Charlie-
“This has the potential for very invasive monitoring.”
Please, there are more dire things to worry about then someone monitoring ship/air traffic.
Just think of all the potential macro environmental capabilities these imaging systems can be used for (tracking population sprawl, deforestation, wildfire & pollution tracking).
Don’t worry, the little boats you’re using to smuggle in your dope can’t be distinguished from all the other little boats.
Jeese
No, seriously, I would move to Australia myself except for the poisonous frogs that can kill you in 3 seconds and the deadly spiders and the fact that the sharks and ‘gators practically run the country. No really, I once met a dingo that stunk so bad I nearly passed out and lost my flesh to him. It reminded me of de time I partied with Artie Lange. He smelled so bad I could have pooped on him and he wouldn’t have noticed!
Look out for the Drop Bears while your walking around in the Outback as well. They can be pretty dangerous for the unwary.
JFK’s Head,
A chicky-babe is a girl/woman. Popularized by guys of southern European extraction on several Aussie TV shows like Acropolis Now. Miss those shows!
Guess it makes me a chicky-babe even though not living in Oz now.
giofoto
Apr 20, 05 – 02:13 pm
I heard that Australia was once a prison.
Correct! The English exported all of their convicts to the far flung colonial outpost that is Australia. It is a history that they are still proud of to this day. Tasmainia was a large “prison island” as well
WinMacGuy,
Drop Bears are pretty rare. You can walk for days in the bush without seeing one.
The article says it will run Tiger but by 2007, we should be running the next big cat from Apple. Perhaps the cow from Redmond will utter it’s first fart when this system is online.
Fast forward to 2007: for a mission critical job which OS will you rather have, a mature OS based on Unix or a 1.0b OS based on NT?
Australia started being a penal colony (not a prison) after the English were no longer able to send their offenders to the Americas. It only stopped being a penal colony after they discovered gold and all the prisoners WANTED to there (according to Bill Bryson in ‘Down Under’)!
I hope this project encourages more of the same and builds a base of Apple ‘experts’ who will be in great demand as Apple approaches 10% of all new CPUs.
As a scientist, I would be very interested to study this fascinating new species, the Australian Chicky-Babe. Now, how do I find one?
: Sara
Apr 20, 05 – 02:48 pm
WinMacGuy,
Drop Bears are pretty rare. You can walk for days in the bush without seeing one.
True although I have been told that it still pays to be wary of them
The system, once operational, almost certainly will not be running Tiger. It is anticipated that the next OS from Apple will ship no later than January 2007. In all probability the clusters will be running some variant of the OS that ships next after Tiger. The development work will be done under Tiger between now and then.
CEOs (Managing Directors in Aussie) are seldom technologically adept enough to know the transitions necessary, how to build development systems (the program will do development and testing on a small cluster then migrate to a moderate sized cluster to test scaling and such then migrate to the full clusters), and their full implementations. It would not surprise me if the reporter asked if the system would be running Apples soon to be released Tiger OS, and the CEO responded “Maybe” or “Probably”.
Yep, and they have some
” rel=”nofollow”>cool stuff too. I spent 4 weeks in Oz in 2001 (US citizen) and was *very* impressed with the general courtesy and politeness.
If you go, *do* try the kangaroo tips. Seriously.