Investigation of Power8 processors for astronomical adaptive optics real-time control

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of POWER8 processors with high memory bandwidth for real-time adaptive optics control in Extremely Large Telescopes, demonstrating their suitability and proposing system designs.

Contribution

It introduces POWER8 processors as a viable solution for adaptive optics real-time control, highlighting their advantages over traditional systems.

Findings

POWER8 processors have high memory bandwidth suitable for adaptive optics

CPU-based control systems reduce complexity and improve maintainability

Proposed designs show potential for ELT instrumentation

Abstract

The forthcoming Extremely Large Telescopes all require adaptive optics systems for their successful operation. The real-time control for these systems becomes computationally challenging, in part limited by the memory bandwidths required for wavefront reconstruction. We investigate new POWER8 processor technologies applied to the problem of real-time control for adaptive optics. These processors have a large memory bandwidth, and we show that they are suitable for operation of first-light ELT instrumentation, and propose some potential real-time control system designs. A CPU-based real-time control system significantly reduces complexity, improves maintainability, and leads to increased longevity for the real-time control system.