Hon Paul Goldsmith
Minister of Science and Innovation
25 August 2017
Media Statement
NZ supporting trans-Tasman ICT development
New Zealand will provide AUD $350,000 in funding for a collaboration between New Zealand’s Nyriad Ltd and the
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Western Australia (ICRAR), Science and Innovation Minister Paul
Goldsmith has announced today.
The funding is in response to a request from the Australian government to support a project that will develop and test
an operating system for managing enormous amounts of science data in real time.
“Australia is a major science and innovation partner for New Zealand, and this new collaboration is another step sign
that our relationship continues to grow and thrive following the signing of the Cooperation Agreement earlier this
year,” Mr Goldsmith says.
The technology has the potential to be applied to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, the world’s largest
scientific venture.
“There is no supercomputer system yet in existence that can handle the data that the SKA will generate. This project is
looking to solve the high performance computing challenges of the future, and places Nyriad at the forefront of this
potentially game-changing technology,” Mr Goldsmith says.
Nyriad is a Cambridge-based company specialising in advanced data storage solutions for big data and high performance
computing.
It has developed pioneering technology for performing data processing and storage together on Graphics Processing Units
(GPUs). ICRAR is a joint venture between the University of Western Australia and Curtin University, with funding from
the Western Australian state government.
The project will use the hardware and data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in Western Australia
to test Nyriad’s technology. The MWA is a precursor telescope to the SKA.
The funding will come from the Catalyst Fund managed by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. The Catalyst
Fund supports international collaborations which have strategic benefit to New Zealand.
ends