MPIfR Correlator Report (September 2008) _______________________________________ MPIfR/BKG MKIV CORRELATOR =========================== GENERAL Current correlator capabilities are listed at: http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/EVN/MK4CORstatus CORRELATOR HARDWARE > Present playback status: 8 Mark 5As (upgrades to 5B available) 4 Mark 5Bs 1 Mark 5B+ (used in the lab) 2 Mark 5C (mezzanine cards will be delivered later) > SDK 8 and SATA firmware are being tested > 2 servers with ~15 TB are used for Internet transfers of VLBI data. CORRELATION SOFTWARE > no changes SOFTWARE CORRELATOR > The compute cluster will be upgraded from 180 to about 500 compute cores before the end of 2008. > The correlation of a multi-field VLBA observation has been the first big test case at Bonn. About 3 TB of correlated data have been generated so far. > The 2nd DiFX workshop was held in Bonn from September 8 - 12. 10 people attended. A development and implementation roadmap was agreed on, tasks were assigned to parties. DiFX 1.0 was defined. > DiFX 1.0 (aka "NRAO version") will be installed in Bonn within the next 4 weeks. > The 2nd stage of geodetic verification will be continued after the implementation of DiFX 1.0 OPERATIONS > 80 750 GB PATA disks were bought and are being used to upgrade smaller modules with 120 GB disks. 50 TB will be added to the EVN pool. E-VLBI > Effelsberg and the MPI are connected via a 1 Gb line to Geant. A 10 Gb P2P connection to JIVE (via Jülich, Aachen, Amsterdam to be shared with LOFAR) is available and has been used for eVLBI to be correlated at Dwingeloo. OTHER > Effelsberg's Mark 5A and Mark 5B unit are being used in parallel for tests of eVLBI with Mark 5B. > The Mark 5A unit will be equipped with an additional dual 1 GE card which will allow trunking. JIVE will test transfers of 1024 Mbit with this configuration over the 10 GE line. > A VSI to/from 10 GE converter board for the DBBC is being developed. It can be connected to both the A/D converter and the FPGA boards. > A DBBC will be installed for test purposes at Effelsberg shortly. > ~ 7 m^3 of tapes were disposed of. W.Alef