OSKAR has been designed to produce simulated visibility data from radio telescopes containing aperture arrays, such as those envisaged for the Square Kilometre Array.
A source code archive, and pre-built binary packages for Linux (using Singularity), macOS and Windows platforms are available to download from
OSKAR is licensed under the terms of the 3-clause BSD License. Please see the LICENSE file for details.
A pre-built Singularity SIF container image
is available for Linux which can be used to run OSKAR command line
applications or Python scripts directly, without needing to compile or install
anything. For Singularity 3.0 or later, an application or script can be run
using the downloaded container
with the singularity exec command, which takes the form:
$ singularity exec [flags] <container_path> <app_name> <arguments>...
Use the --nv flag to enable NVIDIA GPU support in Singularity, if
applicable.
Note also that Singularity will mount the home directory into the container by
default, unless configured otherwise. If you have packages installed in your
home area that should be kept isolated from those in the container (for
example, because of conflicting packages or Python versions, or if you see
other errors caused by trying to load wrong versions of shared libraries when
starting the container) then it may be necessary to disable this either by
using the --no-home flag, or re-bind the home directory in the container
to somewhere other than your actual $HOME using the -H flag.
As an example, to run the application oskar_sim_interferometer
with a parameter file settings.ini and a container image file
OSKAR-Python3.sif (both in the current directory) on a GPU use:
$ singularity exec --nv ./OSKAR-Python3.sif oskar_sim_interferometer settings.ini
Similarly, to run a Python script sim_script.py that uses OSKAR:
$ singularity exec --nv ./OSKAR-Python3.sif python3 sim_script.py
If hardware acceleration is required, be sure to install appropriate GPU drivers which are supported by the hardware manufacturer. Third-party graphics drivers are unlikely to work.
When building from source, the only required dependency is CMake >= 3.1. All other dependencies are optional, but functionality will be limited if these are not found by CMake. Note that these dependencies are required only if building from source, not if using a pre-built package.
- CMake >= 3.1
- (Optional) CUDA >= 7.0 or OpenCL, required for GPU acceleration on supported hardware.
- (Optional) Qt 5, required to build the graphical user interface.
- (Optional) casacore >= 2.0, required to use CASA Measurement Sets.
Packages for these dependencies are available in the package repositories of many recent Linux distributions, including Debian and Ubuntu.
To build from source, either clone the repository using
git clone https://github.com/OxfordSKA/OSKAR.git (for the current master
branch) or download and unpack the source archive, then:
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake [OPTIONS] ../path/to/top/level/source/folder
$ make -j4
$ make install
When running the 'cmake' command a number of options can be specified:
* -DCUDA_ARCH="<arch>" (default: all)
Sets the target architecture for the compilation of CUDA device code.
<arch> must be one of either: 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.2, 3.5, 3.7,
5.0, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7.5,
8.0, 8.6 or ALL.
ALL is for all currently supported architectures.
Separate multiple architectures using semi-colons, if required.
* -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<path> (default: /usr/local/)
Path prefix used to install OSKAR (with make install).
* -DCASACORE_LIB_DIR=<path> (default: searches the system library paths)
Specifies a location to search for the casacore libraries
(libcasa_tables.so and others) if they are not in the system library path.
* -DCASACORE_INC_DIR=<path> (default: searches the system include paths)
Specifies a location to search for the casacore library headers if they
are not in the system include path.
This is the path to the top level casacore include folder.
* -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<path> (default: None)
Specifies a location to search for Qt 5 if it is not in a standard
system path. For example, if using Homebrew on macOS, this may need
to be set to /usr/local/opt/qt5/
* -DFIND_CUDA=ON|OFF (default: ON)
Can be used not to find or link against CUDA.
* -DFIND_OPENCL=ON|OFF (default: OFF)
Can be used not to find or link against OpenCL.
OpenCL support in OSKAR is currently experimental.
* -DNVCC_COMPILER_BINDIR=<path> (default: None)
Specifies a nvcc compiler binary directory override. See nvcc help.
This is likely to be needed only on macOS when the version of the
compiler picked up by nvcc (which is related to the version of XCode
being used) is incompatible with the current version of CUDA.
Set this to 'clang' on macOS if using GCC to build the rest of OSKAR.
* -DFORCE_LIBSTDC++=ON|OFF (default: OFF)
If ON forces the use of libstdc++ with the Clang compiler.
Used for controlling linking behaviour when using clang
or clang-omp compilers with dependencies which may have been compiled
against libstdc++
* -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=<release or debug> (default: release)
Build in release or debug mode.
* -DBUILD_INFO=ON|OFF (default: OFF)
If ON enables the display of diagnostic build information when
running CMake.
After building from source, the unit tests should be run to make sure there are no problems with the build. (Note that pre-built packages do not include the unit tests.)
From the build directory, the unit tests can be run by typing:
$ ctest
After installing OSKAR, the Python interface to it can be installed to
make it easier to use from Python scripts.
Straightforward instructions for installation with pip can be
found in the python subdirectory.
The example simulation described in the documentation can be run to check that a simple simulation behaves as expected.
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