ADASS posters are displayed all week
When
Theme: Other creative topics in astronomical software
The Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) and US National Gemini Office (US-NGO) at NSF's NOIRLab is nearing completion of a project intended 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 ports of the GEMINI package and dependency tasks (e.g. from STSDAS), 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. The project provides a bridge solution until the new DRAGONS software is available for all facility instruments and modes as well as additional benefits to the wider IRAF community.
Early results show a 10-20X speedup of reductions 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 will be discussed.