Location and regular date and time of meeting - agreed weekly on Mondays; GB-137 / Soc-280; 2-3pm ET
ETK codes:
Electronics: 432510.GB3015
Software: 893252.GB3015
Science: 432540.GB3015
Resource Allocations
GUPITA, ARINDAM
1.00
BRANDT, JOE
0.1
FORD, JOHN
0.05
MCCULLOUGH, RANDY
0.05
RAY, JASON
0.55
BLOSS, MARTY
0.1
CREAGER, RAY
0.65
RICHMOND DECKER, JUSTIN
0.2
LYNCH, RYAN
0.25
DEMOREST, PAUL
0.1
PRESTAGE, RICHARD
0.05
Present
Ray, Richard, Jason, Ryan, Paul, Marty, Scott
Agenda
General Updates
BOF Files
Randy still working on c1500x4096 mode
Software
There have been instances of lost observing time due to software remaining in pulsar modes instead of the release spectra line modes
We had been copying executables from those with a .release or .pulsar extension as a way of going back and forth, but revision control would be far better
Ryan and Ray put vegas.conf under git
Executables themselves are not under revision control but the source code is, so we could use git to switch between branches and just rebuild the executables as needed * Ray working on Matrix HPC software * Not yet on github * Joe and Ray are planning on giving a technical talk to any staff that are interested on the new framework
Discussion on bank configuration
How configurable do we want banks to be? Can different banks have completely different BOF files and observing modes, or do we want to enforce similarity?
Ryan points out that we will definitely want each bank to have the option of using different parfiles so that we can observe sources like the double pulsar or globular cluster pulsars in fold-mode. Each bank will also have a different center frequency since the band is split into eight parts of coherent dedispersion.
Paul points out that there may be some special cases in which observers would want different bandwidths and/or resolutions, e.g. pulsar HI absorption or an ultrawideband receiver where higher resolution may be desirable in one part of the band.
Ryan would like to see each bank be independently configurable so that observers have the freedom to come up with novel observing techniques.
Many parameters are indexed and controlled/set by the manager of each bank, so in principle this is possible, though some parameters may not scale well when we have more HPCs as part of BL
We agree that the simple case of different parfiles and center frequencies should be priority, but that when updating config tool, we should leave open the possibility for future development with a more configurable system