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The most impressive part to me (having wintered for IceCube) is how well organised the stack is, and how reliable the in-ice hardware is.

The systems folks have had a decade to iron out most of the bugs and there are fairly tightly scoped teams that work on different components. The failure rate of the DOMs is extremely low for something that's deep in the ice and impossible to physically access. They were very well built and designed, but it helps having people on call 24/7.

All the telescopes here have some sort of data center. Icecube happens to have a lot more computers because of the sheer number of detectors, and a desire to filter data so that preliminary/candidate detections can be sent North as soon as possible. Though unlike the other installations, IceCube is far more sensitive to downtime.

The Event Horizon Telescope setup at SPT probably takes the crown for superlatives in terms of data rate, clock accuracy, etc.




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