%0 Conference Paper
%A Lober, Melissa
%A Diesmann, Markus
%A Kunkel, Susanne
%T Exploiting network topology in brain-scale multi-area model simulations
%I RWTH Aachen
%M FZJ-2024-06598
%D 2024
%X The communication of spike events constitutes a major bottleneck in simulations of brain-scale networks with realistic connectivity, as for example, the multi-area model of macaque visual cortex (Schmidt, 2018). The model consists of 32 cortical microcircuits, each representing a downscaled area of the visual cortex at the resolution of single neurons and synapses. Such models not only have a dense connectivity within areas but also between areas. Synaptic transmission delays within an area can be as short as 0.1 ms and therefore simulations require frequent spike communication between compute nodes to maintain causality in the network dynamics (Morrison, 2008). This poses a challenge to the conventional round-robin scheme used to distribute neurons uniformly across compute nodes disregarding the network’s specific topology.We targe­t this challenge and propose a structure-aware neuron distribution scheme along with a novel spike-communication framework that exploits this approach in order to make communication in large-scale distributed simulations more efficient. In the structure-aware neuron distribution scheme, neurons are placed on the hardware in a way that mimics the network’s topology. Paired with a communication framework that distinguishes local short delay intra-area communication and global long delay inter-area communication, the structure-aware approach minimizes the costly global communication and thereby reduces simulation time. Our prototype implementation is fully tested and was developed within the neuronal simulator tool NEST (Gewaltig, 2007).We show that the new strategy significantly reduces communication time in weak-scaling experiments and the effect increases with an increasing number of compute nodes.[1] Schmidt M, Bakker R, Hilgetag CC, Diesmann M & van Albada SJ (2018) Multi-scale account of the network structure of macaque visual cortex. Brain Structure and Function, 223: 1409 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-017-1554-4[2] Schmidt M, Bakker R, Shen K, Bezgin B, Diesmann M & van Albada SJ (2018) A multi-scale layer-resolved spiking network model of resting-state dynamics in macaque cortex. PLOS Computational Biology, 14(9): e1006359. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006359[3] Morrison A, Diesmann M (2008) Maintaining Causality in Discrete Time Neuronal Network Simulations. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp 267-278. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73159-7_10 [4] https://nest-simulator.readthedocs.io/enlatest[5] Gewaltig M-O & Diesmann M (2007) NEST (Neural Simulation Tool) Scholarpedia 2(4):1430
%B Federation of European Neuroscience Societies
%C 25 Jun 2024 - 29 Jun 2024, Vienna (Austria)
Y2 25 Jun 2024 - 29 Jun 2024
M2 Vienna, Austria
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)24
%9 Poster
%R 10.34734/FZJ-2024-06598
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1033747