Software Engineering Institute

Software is a critical aspect of large-scale science, providing essential capabilities for making scientific discoveries. Large-scale scientific projects are vast in scope, with life spans measured in decades and costs exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars. Successfully designing software that can exist for that span of time, at that scale, is challenging for even the most capable software companies. And yet, scientific endeavors face challenges with funding and staffing and operate in complex, poorly understood software settings. In this paper, we discuss the practice of early-phase software architecture in the Square Kilometer Array Observatory’s Science Data Processor. The Science Data Processor is a critical software component in this next-generation radio astronomy instrument. We customized an existing set of processes for software architecture analysis and design to this project’s unique circumstances. We report on the series of comprehensive software architecture plans that were the result. The plans were used to obtain construction approval in a critical design review with outside stakeholders. We conclude with implications for other long-lived software architectures in the scientific domain, including potential risks and mitigations.