The suitability of cloud, massive and moderate computing environments for SKA scale data

We present the results of our investigations into options for the computing platform for the imaging pipeline in the CHILES project, an ultra-deep HI pathfinder for the era of the Square Kilometre Array. CHILES pushes the current computing infrastructure to its limits and understanding how to deliver the images from this project is clarifying the Science Data Processing requirements for the SKA. We have tested three platforms: a moderately sized cluster, a massive High Performance Computing (HPC) system, and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform. We are able to complete the imaging pipeline processing on both the HPC platform and also on the cloud computing platform, which paves the way for meeting big data challenges in the era of SKA in the field of Radio Astronomy.