Schedule

Monday, May 2 (video streaming available)

’Big picture’ presentations of how the correlator system is implemented in hardware and software. Exposing terminology and showing individual components within different areas of the correlator will help tune a common view of the system to every body.

Tuesday, May 3 (video streaming not available)

Configuring the correlator hardware for a specific observation takes some time, communication channels are shared for different purposes (e.g. state configuration and geometric delay values). This resource-sharing nature of the hardware implies some limitations on how much concurrency the software could apply to configure and carry out specific observations. Showcase specific efficiency limitations related to sub-scan overheads, minimum time interval between sub-scans in a single sub-array and across several sub-arrays. Identify specially affected use-cases and outline priorities and possible approaches to mitigate their attached inefficiencies.

Wednesday, May 4 (video streaming not available)

Discussions and presentations will focus on different aspects:

• New correlator modes and the future.

There is a number of correlator modes still to be commissioned. Based on feedback expected from the next Observing Modes planning meeting (Garching, last week of April) assess required effort to implement and commission them.

• Single Event Upsets and Software Monitoring

Cosmic ray events can have a damaging effect on correlator electronics. The hardware tried to protect itself by means of high current detection and shutdown counter actions. Software monitoring and proper interpretation of collected data should help better understand the effects of each event in the system.

• Hardware and software support for implementing a hardware based simulation environment at the AOS.

By the time of the workshop takes place some major guidelines for this simulation system will be available. Present what the system will be with some detail, time frame, and the required effort for ’first light’.

• Recently founded NA ALMA upgrade studies

Aimed at extending the correlator hardware to produce more spectral channels and support two times more bandwidth and possible a completely new correlator a few more years down the line. Present related implications (ICT point of view in particular) for their implementation and deployment.

The workshop dinner will be held Wednesday evening.

Thursday, May 5 (video streaming available)

In deep description of how the correlator software is actually implemented, with emphasis on the CCC part of it. Present to software developers in particular the different parts (C++ classes, threading instances, hardware interfaces) that implement major functional aspects and their dependencies (CCC and CDP). Help navigate the source code tree based on some specific functionally that one is troubleshooting due to a problem report.