BrainScaleS in EBRAINS

How to access / use the NMC systems?

• Documentation: the neuromorphic computing guidebook (user level documentation) and the "Neuromorphic Platform Specification" (a technical document)..
• For BrainScaleS-2 interactive, please jump directly to the BSS-2 demo descriptions
• Getting access (test access is free of charge and does not need a project description)
• Getting help:
  • if there is an error when running the "Lab", please check the troubleshooting page
  • for usage problems, please consult the list of help resources in the guidebook (like chat and user group) (Note: if you already got an nmc-test-USERNAME Collab created, you can find it via the Collab search function, selecting "Admin" as filter)
  • or contact the EBRAINS support via email

Videos

For some first impressions and tutorial recordings, please see the videos list.

Access

• Via Jupyter Notebook- Please see the getting access page for the process.

  • Interactive mode:  use the BrainScaleS-2 single chip system interactively from the EBRAINS collab (please use the "EBRAINS-experimental" kernel for running interactive scripts. See the troubleshooting page for a description how to select the kernel)
    BrainScaleS-2 interactive examples are documented here and the latest version can be downloaded from the Jupyter notebook branch in this github repository  or git clone the whole examples part.
  • Batch mode. The dashboard page shows the system queue status and usage)
    • Example: synfire chain on BrainScaleS-1 wafer scale system
    • Example: single membrane experiments on BrainScaleS-2 single chip system
• For special purposes access to dedicated setups can also provided via EBRAINS. Please request this type of access via support@ebrains.eu

System types

For BrainScaleS three different system types are currently available via the EBRAINS Collaboratory ("Collab"):

• BrainScaleS-2: the 2nd generation system. Currently available are single chip systems, accessible via Collab since June 2020 for low-level access and since March 2021 also for access using PyNN.
  For a system introduction / overview and some experiment examples see e.g. "The BrainScaleS-2 accelerated neuromorphic system with hybrid plasticity." (arXiv, published 26 January 2022)
  

• The first generation wafer-scale system, accessible via Collab since the HBP platform release on 30 March 2016
  

• Legacy: The standalone single chip system Spikey, the predecessor of the BrainScaleS systems