Trends in Software for Large Astronomy Projects

Current 8-10m ground-based telescopes require complex real-time control systems that are large, distributed, fault tolerant, integrated and heterogeneous. New challenges on the horizon (laser guide star, adaptive optics, 30–40m class telescopes) will bring increased complexity, where requirements cannot be cleanly isolated due to component coupling within the control and acquisition chain. Moreover, the high cost of observing time imposes challenging requirements on system reliability and observing efficiency. New, more complex facilities are not simply scaled up versions of current facilities – paradigm changes may be required. Here, responses by the astronomical community to these new software challenges are discussed. Our focus is the evolution of control system architecture and software infrastructure from the current generation of facilities to the next. Although we focus on control systems, clearly this is just one of the several subsystems integrated within the entire observatory end-to-end operation.