Hardware-accelerated inference for real-time gravitational-wave astronomy

Abstract

Computational demands in gravitational-wave astronomy are expected to at least double over the next five years. As kilometre-scale interferometers are brought to design sensitivity, real-time delivery of gravitational-wave alerts will become increasingly important to enable multimessenger follow-up. Here we discuss a novel implementation and deployment of deep learning inference for real-time data denoising and astrophysical source identification. This objective is accomplished using a generic inference-as-a-service model capable of adapting to the future needs of gravitational-wave data analysis. The implementation allows seamless incorporation of hardware accelerators and also enables the use of commercial or private as-a-service computing. Low-latency and offline computing in gravitational-wave astronomy addresses key challenges in scalability and reliability and provides a data analysis platform particularly optimized for deep learning applications. There is a growing need for data cleaning and source identification for gravitational-wave detectors in real time. A deep learning inference-as-a-service framework using off-the-shelf software and hardware can address these challenges in a scalable and reliable way.