The Register just published a story on the Square Kilometer Array, which focuses on building a project for hardware that doesn’t exist yet, and designing software now for that hardware.
The project estimates that they’ll need ~100PFlops/s of raw processing power. That’s 3 times faster than China’s Tianhe-2, the fastest machine on Earth presently. The telescope will have a raw data output of 2TB per second – 62EB a year – or enough content to fill up 340,000 average-sized laptops each day. The timeline of the project includes early science by 2020, with completion within that decade.
Full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/06/square_kilometer_array_non_existent_computers/
Square Kilometer Array home: https://www.skatelescope.org