Abstract
Software costs for radio telescopes have nearly always been underestimated. Since the Square Kilometre Array is often called a software telescope, repeating the usual error would be particularly egregious. We estimate software costs by scaling from the reasonably well-known costs for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. The resulting model has sharp dependency on the complexity of the SKA, suggesting the obvious – that software costs can most easily be limited by constraining the scientific and operational requirements. A bottom-up costing will not be possible until SKA is much more clearly defined. For the moment, we recommend that 20% of the SKA budget be allocated to software development.
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Kemball, A.J., Cornwell, T.J. A Simple Model Of Software Costs For The Square Kilometre Array. Exp Astron 17, 317–327 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-005-6383-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-005-6383-4