Eviden signs contract with the SKAO to support the data infrastructure of next-generation radio telescopes

Paris, France – November 14, 2025 – Eviden, the Atos Group product brand leading in advanced computing, has been awarded a contract by the SKA Observatory (SKAO) to deliver the Science Data Processing Centre (SDP) Computing work package for both the SKA-Low and SKA-Mid telescope sites in Australia and South Africa.

The signature ceremony for the contract took place in France, an SKAO observing member that announced its decision to join the Observatory in 2021. Formal entry to the SKAO awaits parliamentary ratification of the intergovernmental agreement following the French government signing accession agreement with the Observatory in April 2022. The CNRS, which leads the SKA-France coordination, signed a collaboration agreement with SKAO in March 2022 which facilitates interaction with the French science community.

The SKAO is currently building the two largest radio telescope arrays in the world, which will pose an enormous data challenge.

For the SKAO, the SDP is a critical element of the Observatory’s scientific mission. When the telescopes begin early operations in the next few years, the SDP will process vast volumes of data, enabling researchers to decode cosmic signals and push the boundaries of astrophysics. The telescopes will need to process data equivalent to more than one million 4K Netflix streams, reducing it "on the fly" down to only a few thousand streams’ worth, and ultimately archiving ~700 PB a year.

Initial deployments of SDP hardware are expected in Australia and South Africa during 2026.

Through this partnership, the SKAO will be able to scale up its processing infrastructure as the telescopes grow, by relying on Eviden’s scalable approach: a catalogue of predefined scalable units (SUs) that can be deployed on demand at each site.

Within this, Eviden offers a combination of Intel powered high-performance computing and software capabilities with Data Direct Networks (DDN) storage systems, ensuring low-latency and high-efficiency data handling, with local services delivered by its partner Evernex to ensure operational readiness and regional support. Eviden will also provide the system-level software that ensures all the hardware components work together as a single system.

Nick Rees, SKAO head of Computing and Software said: “The hardware required by the SKAO must meet complex requirements. This includes designing a system that can be deployed in units as needed over time, ensuring that advances in computing and our understanding of the complexities can be incorporated into the SDP hardware during the multi-year construction period. We're dealing with an extremely big data challenge and Eviden is bringing a mature, tried and tested solution to the table. We're very pleased to have them join our delivery journey.”