TY - JOUR
AU - Helias, Moritz
AU - Kunkel, Susanne
AU - Masumoto, Gen
AU - Igarashi, Jun
AU - Eppler, Jochen
AU - Ishii, Shin
AU - Fukai, Tomoki
AU - Morrison, Abigail
AU - Diesmann, Markus
PY - 2012
M3 - Original Research
TI - Supercomputers Ready for Use as Discovery Machines for Neuroscience
JO - Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fninf.2012.00026
VL - 6
SN - 1662-5196
N2 - NEST is a widely used tool to simulate biological spiking neural networks. Here we explain the improvements, guided by a mathematical model of memory consumption, that enable us to exploit for the first time the computational power of the K supercomputer for neuroscience. Multi-threaded components for wiring and simulation combine 8 cores per MPI process to achieve excellent scaling. K is capable of simulating networks corresponding to a brain area with 108 neurons and 1012 synapses in the worst case scenario of random connectivity; for larger networks of the brain its hierarchical organization can be exploited to constrain the number of communicating computer nodes. We discuss the limits of the software technology, comparing maximum filling scaling plots for K and the JUGENE BG/P system. The usability of these machines for network simulations has become comparable to running simulations on a single PC. Turn-around times in the range of minutes even for the largest systems enable a quasi interactive working style and render simulations on this scale a practical tool for computational neuroscience.
ER -