In 2009 the Australian Government, as part of its Super Science initiative, allocated $80 million towards the establishment of the Pawsey Centre Project with the primary aim of hosting new supercomputing facilities and expertise to support SKA (Square Kilometre Array) research and other high-end science. The secondary goal of the Project is to demonstrate Australia’s ability to deliver and support world-class advanced ICT infrastructure and therefore strengthen Australia’s bid to host the SKA, which is critically dependant on advanced ICT.
The Pawsey Centre Project will have the capacity to host new supercomputing facilities and other expertise to provide immediate support to the Australian SKA Pathfinder and Murchison Widefield Array radio astronomy telescopes as well as other high-end research areas of computational and data-intensive science, particularly nanotechnology, biotechnology and geosciences. The SKA is one of the largest scientific projects undertaken anywhere in the world, with the international SKA project community expecting to make a decision on its location (Australia - New Zealand or southern Africa) in 2012.
The Pawsey Centre will comprise a purpose-built building, housing a petascale supercomputing system and associated works at Kensington, Western Australia. It will be constructed on CSIRO-owned land adjacent to the CSIRO’s existing Australian Resources Research Centre facility at Technology Park, Bentley, which is located approximately six kilometres from Perth’s CBD. The Project also encompasses infrastructure housed at iVEC@Murdoch and iVEC@UWA.
The new facilities will incorporate initiatives to minimise impact on the environment and best practice technologies to minimise energy usage.
The following images represent the finalised design of the Pawsey Centre.
Please click the below links to download high detail PDF renderings of the final Pawsey Centre design: