ALMA at ADASS• Lorente – Science Data Modelfor ALMA/EVLA (Before me) •• Nakazato – Single Dish
Analysis software for ALMA •(After me)• Davis – ALMA Pipeline•Heuristics(P#12)• Hoffstadt – Reusable state•machine (P#28)• Morita – Spatial Frequency•Weights (P#48)
Reveco – Device code
generation framework (P#63)
Sugimoto – Single dishsimulator (P#71)
Tobar – ACS and POSIX
compliant RTOS (P#77)
Wicenec – ALMA Front-end
Archive (P#83)
Ye – 3D Data Cube viewer(P#88)

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ALMA• 66 transportable antennas– 54 12m antennas– 12 7m antennas– 14km largest antenna separation (~milli-arcsecond)• 100 – 1000 GHz• Interferometer (all antenna pairs) plus single-dishmeasurements• Very dry site @ 5000m in Northern Chile• Worldwide collaboration: East Asia (NAOJ), Europe(ESO), North America (NRAO)• $1.3B – most expensive ground-based telescope (so far)– ~$50M software development (450 FTE-y) & computers
ADASS 2009, Sapporo

312m Array

Simula4on (!)

AtacamaCompact Array (ACA)ADASS 2009, Sapporo

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OSFADASS 2009, Sapporo

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AOSADASS 2009, Sapporo

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First Antenna To the High Site

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Major Scientific Milestones
1. Start of Scientific Commissioning (2010 Q1)––Currently in “Assembly, Integration, Verification” (AIV) stage
Emphasis on control software, data processing software

2. Start of Early Science (2011 Q3)– Requires most software, including user software (e.g., phase 1 & 2)
– Automatic pipelining not reliable

3. Inauguration (2012 Q4)
4. Completion of Construction (2013)

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ALMA Computing Integrated Product Team(IPT)• Software system designed and built as an ambitious,demanding, end-to-end software system– Up-front design and implementation– Result will be a ~3M line of code “end to end” software system runningon over 200 computers on 4 continents.
• (figure does not include comments, documentation, or adopted/
modified products like CASA, NGAS, ATM, etc).

• Work areas– Functional: Proposal preparation, monitoring, dynamicscheduling, equipment control and calibration, correlator
control and processing, archiving, automated pipeline
processing, offline processing, operational software, dataacquisition• Not: embedded software (hardware groups), algorithm development
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ALMA Computing IPT (2)– Support Activities: management, requirements, analysis,
common software, software engineering, integration and test,
commissioning support– Necessary operational computer equipment• Personnel distribution (70+ FTE)
– Multi-site (15), multi-continent (4) software development
organization– Complete technical authority in IPT management– Subsystem development sometimes split between organizations,but with a dominant partner

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10Commissioning Software
Key deliverables:• Control & ACA Software (including all hardware at antennas and AOS)
• Correlator Software (control and raw data acquisition)• Common Software (common framework and libraries for all ALMAsoftware)• Executive Software (operator user interfaces, procedures)• Front-End Archive (basic archiving and queries, at OSF)
+ Some items from later-stage subsystems• Quicklook display (subset of Pipeline, needed by operator)• Scheduling Block (SB) queue handling (subset of Scheduling, no dynamicsched.)• Data reduction Commissioning features (subset of CASA, CLIC/Gildas)• SB creation (subset of Observation Preparation)• Online calculation of telescope calibration parameters.
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Observatory Software•••••••Key deliverables:
Data driven Pipeline: automated flagging, calibration and imaging withassociated quality information for common ALMA observing modes.
Operations Support for science ops.: proposal review support, data
products management, support monitor and quality checking of data …
Dynamic scheduling (weather optimized choice of SBs)
Offline data reduction: extensive support for multi-channel, multipolarization, multi-spectral window, multi-pointing flagging, calibration,imaging, and analysis for interferometric, single dish, and combined data.
Fully distributed Archive operation (storage of SBs, raw data, Pipeline
images and logs, monitor data, calibr. data, site data), VO support.
Telescope Calibration pipeline, providing real-time calibration data
Observation Preparation for all ALMA observing modes and suitable also
for novice users (automated generation of SBs), widely portable.
ADASS 2009, Sapporo
12SoftwareArchitecture

ALMA Data Transfer Characteristics•Streaming input rates ~ 6.4 (avg), 64 (peak) MByte/s– Raw and pixel data, dominated (95%) by visibility data
– Data volume ~ 200 TByte/year•Operations plan recommends:– Main Archive at OSF only for first year (taken as: from the start ofcommissioning)– Then at Santiago (full copy at OSF) w/100 Mb/s link

•Archive replicated to ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs)– Media shipment 10x cheaper than network link
• Network costs / availability frequently changes (e.g., NSF initiatives).
We follow this area and will re-evaluate as necessary.
– Distributed from the ARCs to the observers and then the community (afterproprietary period) by VO, ALMA Web interfaces, and media shipment(large datasets)
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Underlying Technologies• Programming Languages: Java, C++, Python• Source file management: CVS, make, eclipse• Communications: CORBA– Direct binary arguments & large structures in XML– Services: Notification channel (events), A/V streaming (bulk data)• Object runtime & distribution: Container/Component– Homegrown (part of ALMA Common Software (ACS))• Persistence (All persistence through ALMA Archiveinterfaces)– File storage & replication: NGAS (ESO)– Meta/Auxillary data: XML + RDBMS• Raw data is not FITS
– RDBMS (& XML): Oracle
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Underlying Technologies (2)• Adopted software: Lots
– ATM, SLALIB, CALC, MATPLOTLIB, …

• User Portal: Plone, CAS• Code generation– Fundamental data structures (science and project data models) represented inUML, language bindings generated from this.
– ICD Spreadsheet Device Drivers• OS: Linux & Real-Time Linux (Operational), Linux/MacOS(CASA)• Real-Time I/O: CAN bus, simple master/slave protocol

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Process• Several groups involved in process areas:– High Level Analysis: Conformance to architecture,interfaces. (No longer active)– Software Engineering: Largely tool (e.g., versioncontrol), and infrastructure support.
– Science Software Requirements: Requirements
management, user tests, domain knowledge (now lead bycommissioning/operations staff)– Integration, Test, Support: Standard test environment,integration tests.
– Common Software: Provide frameworks for a common
technical approach.
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Process (2)• Some lessons learned– Temporary cross-subsystem Function-Based Teams (FBT) vital– Moving away from strict monthly timeboxed iterations• 6 month release dates still fixed– Standard test environment (rack of computers playing role ofvarious operational systems) extremely useful for development& testing• Requires some simulation to be available• Can run single-field interferometry in simulation

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Organizational Principles••

Trilateral IPT
Broken into 16 subsystems (= functional/support areas)– 2 – 11 people per subsystem•Cross-subsystem developments (e.g., observing modes) take place intemporary Function Based Teams (FBTs)– ~5 per 6 month cycle– Started FBTs in 2006 to overcome problem with developments being tooindependent•Fixed 6 month release dates; detailed planning discussed at annual CDR#nreview (2009 = CDR7)– Progress checked via requirements tracking, testing

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Overall Status• We have been running an end-to-end system since2005• The software is in use 24x7 in Chile (in 4 independent
installations)– “Commissioning” level use• Software areas not yet in use at the observatory:
science pipeline, science archive/VO, Phase I proposal,
dynamic scheduling, “observatory operations” (e.g.,observing tracking)• CASA – was AIPS++– Data processing package for ALMA & EVLA– In beta release, will be fully released in December– Generally well received, but with a lot of skepticism to overcome
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Sgr B2 Spectrum
97.9 GHz
Raster on Moon with Total Powerdetectors simultaneously on 2antennas
Taken at ATF, not using
producEon receivers,
but verifying soIware
for control, tuning,correlator and data
reducEon
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The Quicklook Display System in Playback
Mode
In playback mode theQuicklook Display Systemsetup uses the ACS command
center (center panel) and the
Object Explorer tool (upperleft panel) to start theQuicklook session manager
and the calibration resultsmonitor.
An ASDM is loaded into Data
Capture memory from disk
and the calibration results areplayed back and sent toQuicklook.
The results of 14 pointing
scans from an ASDM taken at
the ATF are displayed (lowerright panel).

The Single Dish Pipeline: M16 CO Gridding andImaging Stage

Standard Interferometry Pipeline:
NGC2146A HI Calibrator Flagging StageAntennas 13 and 20 were completely and 5 and 16 partially flagged due to high phasedeviations. 5 and 16 were later completely flagged due to the too much bad antenna data rule

Standard Interferometry Pipeline: NGC2146A HI
Final Imaging Stage

Final clean and residual images of the target source. All the bandpass and gain calibrator flags have been applied as well as themedian phase jump flags. No additional flagging was done on the target source.

Pointed Mosaic Pipeline: Sagittarius A X
Band Final Imaging Stage

Final pointed mosaic continuum image of the target source. All calibrator and target flags have been applied.

Observing Tool

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Phase 1 tool (new)ADASS 2009, Sapporo

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ALMA is nearly here!

D. Barkats

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America
and Eas cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical
Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation
with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by theNational Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMAconstruction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National
Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and managementof the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

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