Jose Villamar
(Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
Most of the Top500 computer systems and all of the upcoming exascale machines employ GPUs alongside CPUs. To get the most performance out of these architectures, simulation software requires efficient support for both processor types. Decades of simulator development enable the routine simulation of large-scale neuronal network models on thousands of many-core CPUs in parallel [1]; recent GPU implementations show highly competitive results [2, 3]. Here, we present our project to integrate NEST GPU (formerly NeuronGPU [3]) into the ecosystem of the CPU-based simulator NEST [4]. NEST GPU, written in CUDA-C++, lends itself to this integration due to a similar interface and a modular structure. The development will continue within the NEST Initiative under the same GitHub organization [5], although the codes themselves are still separate. We pursue the unified, community-centered workflow already pioneered by NEST: build processes, model development (NESTML [6]), documentation standards along with quality assurance through continuous integration. We are looking forward to a fruitful exchange between NEST and NEST GPU, enabling the optimization of simulator performance under the hood while providing a common frontend for users to seamlessly harness both CPUs and GPUs in the future.
Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from EU Grant 945539 (HBP), Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC) ZT-I-PF-3-026, Joint lab SMHB, Helmholtz IVF Grant SO-092 (ACA) and NeuroSys-Projekt C. The authors gratefully acknowledge VSR computation grant JINB33, Jülich, and the use of Fenix Infrastructure resources, which are partially funded from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the ICEI project under the grant agreement No. 800858.
References
- Jordan et al. (2018) Front. Neuroinform. 12:2. DOI:10.3389/fninf.2018.00002
- Knight & Nowotny (2018) Front. Neurosci. 12:941. DOI:10.3389/fnins.2018.00941
- Golosio et al. (2021) Front. Comput. Neurosci. 15:627620. DOI:10.3389/fncom.2021.627620
- https://www.nest-simulator.org
- https://github.com/nest/nest-gpu
- https://nestml.readthedocs.io
| Preferred form of presentation |
Poster & advertising flash talk
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| Topic area |
simulator technology and performance
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| Keywords |
spiking neural network simulator, GPU accelerated computing, NEST GPU
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| Speaker time zone |
UTC+2
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Yes
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| I agree to the declaration of honor |
Yes
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Jose Villamar
(Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
G. Tiddia
(Department of Physics, University of Cagliari, Monserrato (CA), Italy, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Cagliari, Monserrato (CA), Italy)
C. Linssen
(Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; Simulation & Data Lab Neuroscience, Institute for Advanced Simulation, Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany)
P.N. Babu
(Simulation & Data Lab Neuroscience, Institute for Advanced Simulation, Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany)
E. Pastorelli
(Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Roma, Rome, Italy)
P.S. Paolucci
(Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Roma, Rome, Italy)
A. Morrison
(Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; Simulation & Data Lab Neuroscience, Institute for Advanced Simulation, Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; Department of Computer Science 3 - Software Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
M. Diesmann
(Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany; Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, School of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; Department of Physics, Faculty 1, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
B. Golosio
(Department of Physics, University of Cagliari, Monserrato (CA), Italy, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Cagliari, Monserrato (CA), Italy)
J. Senk
(Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Jülich Research Centre, Jülich, Germany)
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