SpikeFun v0.90 is out and brings support for more advanced pyramidal neuron morphologies such as apical tufts and dendritic tree branching. In addition, new milestone has been reached - simulation with 3.52 billion synapses, which is just some 0.5 billion synapses shy of the current built-in simulation limits. Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun and its DigiCortex engine have been scaled to accommodate simulation of 16.7 million multi-compartment neurons with 2.1 billion synapses. To my best knowledge, this is the largest-scale simulation of cortical neurons on a home PC. Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun is now 1 years old! This article goes through the progress of the DigiCortex library and SpikeFun demo simulator in the last year and also describes some of the ideas that will be implemented in the future. Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun v0.82 brings support for modeling of brainstem nuclei - in this early phase, only one nuclei is supported (Pedunculopontine Tegmental Nucleus - PPTN). PPTN nuclei was chosen as the first because it sends strongs projections to Thalamus and represents one of the key hubs of the ascending arousal system and, as such, is implicated in core conciousness mechanisms such as awareness. Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun v0.80 comes with the first (pre-alpha) preview of the future simulation-modelling GUI (DigiCortexIDE binary). At the moment, new GUI is not offering much of the planned functionality but even to get to this point, big changes were made under-the-hood so DigiCortex can become usable outside simple "demo app" environment. Another change is the new algorithm for tracking subcortical white matter connectivity, allowing for identification of thalamic nuclei (still in very early phase - and error prone). Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun v0.77 brings the open and extensible XML-based project configuration system, allowing deep access to the neuronal simulation configuration as well as possibilities of extending and/or changing the simulation behavior. Furthermore, entire neuron library is now open and defined in XML models, allowing for many interesting experiments... click on the title to find out more!
Video below shows SpikeFun in action simulating 8 million neurons with 1.45 billion (yes, that's right - billion) synapses. This simulation takes approx ~130 GB of RAM + 20 more for additional data (visualization, DSI tracts, etc...).
Check the video out (it is also available in Full HD and 2560x1440):
SpikeFun v0.67 brings support for CPU and memory bandwidth benchmarking (SpikeBench) as well as support for hardware monitoring using Intel(r) Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) present in Intel's Core i7(TM) processors. Results on the reference system are analyzed... Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun v0.65 contains extensive optimizations for NUMA architectures (such as Intel(R) Xeon(TM) E5-2600) with multiple CPU sockets and memory divided per CPU groups. Speed up of over 25% is measured on our reference system. Click on the title to find out more!
SpikeFun v0.57 has just been released and it is loaded with new features ranging from the new network generation algorithm all the way down to the new command line interface... click on the title to find out what's new!
