Home

This is the personal website of Chris Broekema. I am a research staff member at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, focusing on designing and building efficient and sustainable data-transport and data-processing infrastructures for radio telescopes.

Scientific publications

Theses

Broekema, P. Chris. 2020. “Commodity Compute-and Data-Transport System Design in Modern Large-Scale Distributed Radio Telescopes.” PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam. Download
Broekema, P. Chris. 2004. “Numerical Analysis of the LOFAR Remote Station Beamformer.” MSc thesis, University of Groningen. Download

Pre-print publications

Broekema, P. Chris, and Rob V. van Nieuwpoort. 2024. “SuperCode: Sustainability PER AI-Driven CO-DEsign.” Download

Peer-reviewed journal publications

Brunet, T., E. Tolley, S. Corda, R. Ilic, P. C. Broekema, and J. P. Kneib. 2024. “Quantum Radio Astronomy: Data Encodings and Quantum Image Processing.” Astronomy and Computing 47:100796. doi: 10.1016/j.ascom.2024.100796. Download
Renaud, N., P. Rodríguez-Sánchez, J. Hidding, and P. Chris Broekema. 2024. “Quantum Radio Astronomy: Quantum Linear Solvers for Redundant Baseline Calibration.” Astronomy and Computing 100803. doi: 10.1016/j.ascom.2024.100803.
Cadavid, Héctor, Vasilios Andrikopoulos, Paris Avgeriou, and P. Chris Broekema. 2022. “System and Software Architecting Harmonization Practices in Ultra-Large-Scale Systems of Systems: A Confirmatory Case Study.” Information and Software Technology 150:106984. doi: 10.1016/j.infsof.2022.106984. Download
Cadavid, Héctor, Vasilios Andrikopoulos, Paris Avgeriou, and P. Chris Broekema. 2022. “System and Software Architecting Harmonization Practices in Ultra-Large-Scale Systems of Systems.” Information and Software Technology 150:106984. doi: 10.1016/j.infsof.2022.106984.
Broekema, P. Chris, Verity Allan, Rob V. van Nieuwpoort, and Henri E. Bal. 2020. “On Optimising Cost and Value in Compute Systems for Radio Astronomy.” Astronomy and Computing 30:100337. doi: 10.1016/j.ascom.2019.100337.
Broekema, P. Chris, J. Jan David Mol, R. Nijboer, A. S. van Amesfoort, M. A. Brentjens, G. Marcel Loose, W. F. A. Klijn, and J. W. Romein. 2018. “Cobalt: A GPU-Based Correlator and Beamformer for LOFAR.” Astronomy and Computing 23:180–92. doi: 10.1016/j.ascom.2018.04.006.
Lenkiewicz, Przemyslaw, P. Chris Broekema, and Bernard Metzler. 2018. “Energy-Efficient Data Transfers in Radio Astronomy with Software UDP RDMA.” Future Generation Computer Systems 79:215–24. doi: 10.1016/j.future.2017.03.027.
Broekema, P. C., R. V. van Nieuwpoort, and H. E. Bal. 2015. “The Square Kilometre Array Science Data Processor. Preliminary Compute Platform Design.” Journal of Instrumentation 10(07):C07004–C07004. doi: 10.1088/1748-0221/10/07/C07004.
Van Haarlem, M. P., M. W. Wise, A. W. Gunst, G. Heald, J. P. McKean, J. W. T. Hessels, A. G. De Bruyn, R. Nijboer, J. Swinbank, R. Fallows, M. Brentjens, A. Nelles, R. Beck, H. Falcke, R. Fender, J. Hörandel, L. V. E. Koopmans, G. Mann, G. Miley, H. Röttgering, B. W. Stappers, R. A. M. J. Wijers, S. Zaroubi, M. Van Den Akker, A. Alexov, J. Anderson, K. Anderson, A. Van Ardenne, M. Arts, A. Asgekar, I. M. Avruch, F. Batejat, L. Bähren, M. E. Bell, M. R. Bell, I. Van Bemmel, P. Bennema, M. J. Bentum, G. Bernardi, P. Best, L. Bîrzan, A. Bonafede, A. J. Boonstra, R. Braun, J. Bregman, F. Breitling, R. H. Van De Brink, J. Broderick, P. C. Broekema, W. N. Brouw, M. Brüggen, H. R. Butcher, W. Van Cappellen, B. Ciardi, T. Coenen, J. Conway, A. Coolen, A. Corstanje, S. Damstra, O. Davies, A. T. Deller, R. J. Dettmar, G. Van Diepen, K. Dijkstra, P. Donker, A. Doorduin, J. Dromer, M. Drost, A. Van Duin, J. Eislöffel, J. Van Enst, C. Ferrari, W. Frieswijk, H. Gankema, M. A. Garrett, F. De Gasperin, M. Gerbers, E. De Geus, J. M. Grießmeier, T. Grit, P. Gruppen, J. P. Hamaker, T. Hassall, M. Hoeft, H. A. Holties, A. Horneffer, A. Van Der Horst, A. Van Houwelingen, A. Huijgen, M. Iacobelli, H. Intema, N. Jackson, V. Jelic, A. De Jong, E. Juette, D. Kant, A. Karastergiou, A. Koers, H. Kollen, V. I. Kondratiev, E. Kooistra, Y. Koopman, A. Koster, M. Kuniyoshi, M. Kramer, G. Kuper, P. Lambropoulos, C. Law, J. Van Leeuwen, J. Lemaitre, M. Loose, P. Maat, G. Macario, S. Markoff, J. Masters, R. A. McFadden, D. McKay-Bukowski, H. Meijering, H. Meulman, M. Mevius, E. Middelberg, R. Millenaar, J. C. A. Miller-Jones, R. N. Mohan, J. D. Mol, J. Morawietz, R. Morganti, D. D. Mulcahy, E. Mulder, H. Munk, L. Nieuwenhuis, R. Van Nieuwpoort, J. E. Noordam, M. Norden, A. Noutsos, A. R. Offringa, H. Olofsson, A. Omar, E. Orrú, R. Overeem, H. Paas, M. Pandey-Pommier, V. N. Pandey, R. Pizzo, A. Polatidis, D. Rafferty, S. Rawlings, W. Reich, J. P. De Reijer, J. Reitsma, G. A. Renting, P. Riemers, E. Rol, J. W. Romein, J. Roosjen, M. Ruiter, A. Scaife, K. Van Der Schaaf, B. Scheers, P. Schellart, A. Schoenmakers, G. Schoonderbeek, M. Serylak, A. Shulevski, J. Sluman, O. Smirnov, C. Sobey, H. Spreeuw, M. Steinmetz, C. G. M. Sterks, H. J. Stiepel, K. Stuurwold, M. Tagger, Y. Tang, C. Tasse, I. Thomas, S. Thoudam, M. C. Toribio, B. Van Der Tol, O. Usov, M. Van Veelen, A. J. Van Der Veen, S. Ter Veen, J. P. W. Verbiest, R. Vermeulen, N. Vermaas, C. Vocks, C. Vogt, M. De Vos, E. Van Der Wal, R. Van Weeren, H. Weggemans, P. Weltevrede, S. White, S. J. Wijnholds, T. Wilhelmsson, O. Wucknitz, S. Yatawatta, P. Zarka, A. Zensus, and J. Van Zwieten. 2013. “LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray.” Astronomy & Astrophysics 556:A2. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201220873. Download
Yoshii, Kazutomo, Kamil Iskra, Harish Naik, Pete Beckman, and P. Chris Broekema. 2011. “Performance and Scalability Evaluation of ‘Big Memory’ on Blue Gene Linux.” The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications 25(2):148–60. doi: 10.1177/1094342010369116.
Romein, John W., P. Chris Broekema, Jan David Mol, and Rob V. Van Nieuwpoort. 2010. “The LOFAR Correlator: Implementation and Performance Analysis.” ACM SIGPLAN Notices 45(5):169–78. doi: 10.1145/1837853.1693477.
Van Der Schaaf, Kjeld, Chris Broekema, Ger Van Diepen, and Ellen Van Meijeren. 2004. “The Lofar Central Processing Facility Architecture.” Experimental Astronomy 17(1–3):43–58. doi: 10.1007/s10686-005-2865-7.

Peer-reviewed conference articles

Cadavid, Hector, Vasilios Andrikopoulos, Paris Avgeriou, and P. Chris Broekema. 2021. “System- and Software-Level Architecting Harmonization Practices for Systems-of-Systems : An Exploratory Case Study on a Long-Running Large-Scale Scientific Instrument.” Pp. 13–24 in 2021 IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA). Stuttgart, Germany: IEEE. Download
Broekema, P. Chris, Damiaan R. Twelker, Daniel C. Romão, Paola Grosso, Rob V. Van Nieuwpoort, and Henri E. Bal. 2017. “Software-Defined Networks in Large-Scale Radio Telescopes.” Pp. 263–66 in Proceedings of the Computing Frontiers Conference. Siena Italy: ACM. Download
Broekema, P. Chris, Albert-Jan Boonstra, Victoria Caparrós Cabezas, Ton Engbersen, Hanno Holties, Jens Jelitto, Ronald P. Luijten, Peter Maat, Rob V. Van Nieuwpoort, Ronald Nijboer, John W. Romein, and Bert Jan Offrein. 2012. “DOME: Towards the ASTRON & IBM Center for Exascale Technology.” Pp. 1–4 in Proceedings of the 2012 workshop on High-Performance Computing for Astronomy Date. Delft The Netherlands: ACM.
Broekema, P. Chris, Rob V. van Nieuwpoort, and Henri E. Bal. 2012. “ExaScale High Performance Computing in the Square Kilometer Array.” P. 9 in Proceedings of the 2012 workshop on High-Performance Computing for Astronomy Date - Astro-HPC ’12. Delft, The Netherlands: ACM Press.
Romein, John W., P. Chris Broekema, Ellen Van Meijeren, Kjeld Van Der Schaaf, and Walther H. Zwart. 2006. “Astronomical Real-Time Streaming Signal Processing on a Blue Gene/L Supercomputer.” Pp. 59–66 in Proceedings of the eighteenth annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures. Cambridge Massachusetts USA: ACM. Download

Student projects

While this page is not guaranteed to be current, here are some projects that I’ve written and may be of interest to prospective students. If interested, contact me at broekema<at>astron.nl

Using Large Language Models to port GPU code from Cuda to HIP

CWL to Dask code to code compiler

Neuromorphic correlator and beamformer

Rethinking the Fourier transform in radio telescopes — refraction

Analogue neuromorphic computing for radio astronomy front-end signal processing – in progress

RFI monitoring with low-end AI-hardware – in progress

Sustainability of data-intensive science code – in progress

Making data-intensive science sustainable – incentivizing stakeholders – in progress

Curriculum vitae

Chris Broekema is a senior research staff member at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy since 2003. Over the years he has focused most of his work on compute- and data transport hardware design for radio astronomy. He has designed, built, procured, operated and worked on high-performance computing systems for the LOFAR telescope in the Netherlands, including some of the fastest supercomputers in the world at the time, since 2004. More recently his focus shifted to the computational and data-transport challenges in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), where he was responsible for the hardware platform design of the SKA Science Data Processor (SDP).

To support this work he has done applied research into compute- and data-transport systems. His focus is on the various system aspects that impact the sustainability, suitability and usability of current and emerging compute- and data-transport systems. He has published extensively and defended his PhD thesis on the subject in 2020. He served in various panels and review committees, most notably for the ASKAP science data processor and the ARTS system, and has presented his work numerous times, both nationally and internationally. 

Contact

broekema <at> astron <dot> nl