A major challenge in modern radio astronomy is dealing with the massive data
volumes generated by wide-bandwidth receivers. Such massive data rates are
often too great for a single device to cope, and so processing must be split
across multiple devices working in parallel. These devices must work in unison
to process incoming data in real time, reduce the data volume to a manageable
size, and output a science-ready data product. The aim of this chapter is to
give a broad overview of how digital systems for radio telescopes are commonly
implemented, with a focus on real-time stream processing over multiple compute
devices.Comment: Chapter to appear in "Big Data in Radio Astronomy: Scientific Data
Processing for Advanced Radio Telescopes