Planck 2015 results - XII. Full focal plane simulations

We present the 8th full focal plane simulation set (FFP8), deployed in of the Planck 2015 results. FFP8 consists of 10 fiducial mission reduced to 18 144 maps, together with the most massive of Monte Carlo realizations of instrument noise and CMB ever , comprising 104 mission realizations reduced to about 106 . The resulting maps incorporate the dominant instrumental, , and data analysis effects, and the remaining subdominant will be included in future updates. Generated at a cost of some 25 million CPU-hours spread across multiple high-performance-computing (HPC) platforms, FFP8 is used to validate and verify analysis algorithms their implementations, and to remove biases from and quantify in the results of analyses of the real data.