Modernizing IRAF to Support Gemini Data Reduction

TL;DR

This project modernized IRAF for Gemini data reduction by porting it to 64-bit platforms, fixing compatibility issues, and establishing support, resulting in significant performance improvements especially on newer hardware.

Contribution

The paper details the first comprehensive upgrade of IRAF for modern hardware, including platform ports, system fixes, and support infrastructure, enhancing usability and performance.

Findings

10-20X faster execution on native 64-bit systems

Significant performance gains on Apple M1/M2 hardware

Successful verification and deployment of the upgraded system

Abstract

The US National Gemini Office (US NGO), part of the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) at NSF's NOIRLab, has completed a project to upgrade the IRAF-based Gemini reduction software to provide a fully supported system capable of running natively on modern hardware. This work includes 64-bit platform ports of the GEMINI package and dependency tasks (e.g. from the STSDAS external package), upgrades to the core IRAF system and all other external packages to fix any platform and licensing problems, and the establishment of fully supported Help Desk and distribution systems for the user community. Early results show a 10-20X speedup of execution times using the native 64-bit software compared to the virtualized 32-bit solutions now in use. Results are even better on new Apple M1/M2 platforms where the additional overhead of Intel CPU emulation can be eliminated. Timing comparisons, science verification testing, and release plans are discussed.