RADIOBLOCKS: New European consortium to develop next generation technologies for radio astronomy infrastructure

The RADIOBLOCKS project, coordinated by JIV-ERIC and including major European research infrastructures for radio astronomy, together with partners from industry and academia, has been granted 10 million euros by the European Commission to develop 'common building blocks' for technological solutions beyond state-of-the-art, that will enable a broad range of new science and enhance European scientific competitiveness. This project will start on 1 March 2023, with significant involvement from e-MERLIN and Jodrell Bank, as well as other major European research infrastructures such as LOFAR, EVN, NOEMA; individual dishes such as Effelsberg, Sardinia, IRAM-30m, Yebes; and partners across the world such as the SKA, ALMA, GMVA and EHT. It will take a holistic view of how radio telescope arrays capture, process, synthesise and analyse cosmic signals and will develop components, technologies and software, applicable to a wide range of instruments, to enable the next major discoveries in radio astronomy. RADIOBLOCKS aims to achieve a maximal boost for the major world-leading research infrastructures in radio astronomy by developing common needed blocks: for the development of new correlators, which can efficiently exploit powerful new commercially available accelerator hardware (GPUs).