Редактирование: Whole brain emulation (раздел)

==== SpiNNaker ====

* SpiNNaker is a massively parallel, low power, neuromorphic supercomputer
* Manchester University, UK
** lead by Professor Steve Furber
** collaborators from the universities of Southampton, Cambridge, and Sheffield
* model very large, biologically realistic, spiking neural networks in real time
* Machine
** The machine will consist of 65,536 identical custom-built 18-core processors, giving it 1,179,648 cores in total
** Each processor has an on-board router to form links with six neighbours, forming a toroidal network, as well as its own 128 MB of memory to hold synaptic weights. One processors contains 18 identical cores clocked at 200 MHz. A core is an ARM968 processor core manufactured using a 130 nm process, 32 kB of instruction memory, 64 kB of data memory, three controllers, a clock, and a timer. although ARM968 is old, it is used because the licensing agreement was committed to back in 2005. Each multiprocessor chip has about 100 million transistors, most of which are in the 55 blocks of 32 kB SRAM local instruction and data memory.
** On a separate die, but within the same chip package, is a 128 MB DDR SDRAM memory chip that operates at up to 166 MHz. This has about a billion transistors. The multiprocessor and memory chips are packaged together, one above the other, in a 19x19mm 300-pin ball grid array.
** Each core dissipates 1 Watt of energy. The SpiNNaker machine is expected to consume 50-100 kW peak, although the average is predicted to be well below 50 kW. For comparison, the average human brain consumes around 20 W.
**The finished million-processor machine will occupy several cabinets. At least six to eight, possibly more if the power density turns out to be an issue.
**A possible configuration would be: 48 chips per board, 12 boards per rack, 20 racks per cabinet, 6 cabinets. This is a purely speculative configuration dreamt up by this article's author.
** massive parallelism and resilience to failure of individual components. With over one million cores, and one thousand simulated neurons per core, the machine will be capable of simulating one billion neurons. This equates to just over 1% of the human brain's 86 billion neurons.
* SpiNNaker will be a platform on which different algorithms can be tested
** many connectivities can be made
* SpiNNaker is a contrived acronym derived from Spiking Neural Network Architecture.
* The project started in 2005 and is currently funded by a UK government grant until early 2014. The microchips were manufactured and delivered to the lab in June 2011. A prototype with 864 cores was built in mid-2012. The full machine with over 1 million cores is expected to be complete by the end of 2013.
* The SpiNNaker machine, when complete by the end of 2013, will be able to simulate around 1 billion neurons. This equates to just over 1% of the human brain's 86 billion neurons. If the system proves successful then similar machines can be built to take advantage of more advanced processors. For example, the 130 nm process used for the SpiNNaker chips is over a decade old - this process was used for the consumer processors that went on sale starting in 2001. If a more modern process were used, for example 22 nm as used in 2012's consumer-level devices, then power consumption could be reduced by a factor of 10.

* [http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/lowpower-chips-to-model-a-billion-neurons/0 ''Low-Power Chips to Model a Billion Neurons'']
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw8OH3VlYtg Professor Steve Furber giving a talk at Edinburgh University called 'Building brains']
* [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165027012000866 ''Power-efficient simulation of detailed cortical microcircuits on SpiNNaker'']