Data and Computing

Large finely resolved x-ray imaging requires a significant volume of data storage, and an ability to process large data sets. The Australian Synchrotron Computing Infrastructure (ASCI) provides this for IMBL. ASCI computing platforms are accessible through an easily used web interface, available wherever internet connection is available. ASCI has direct access to IMBL experiment data. During an experiment a reserved section of the computing infrastructure is available ‘online’. This useful facility permits ‘quick look’ reconstruction during the experiment to verify the data being collected is high quality.

More refined reconstruction and analysis is typically performed after the beamtime at the home institute at a more relaxed pace.

Experiments typically generate several Terabytes of raw data. The ASCI filestore policy pledges to hold this on our systems for at least 6 months. A secure FTP (SFTP) server allows Users to copy data from this filestore to home institute data centers.

IMBL scientists provide training in use of the software during beamtime, and are willing to act as consultants afterwards. IMBL in-house pre-processing pipelines are fast and easy to use. Some academic and commercial applications are available on ASCI for visualisation and more in-depth analysis.