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

  • Batch mode (accessing these Jupyter notebooks requires to log in with an EBRAINS account. For your own experiments you will also need an own collab + test quota. Please see the getting access page for the how-to. 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
  • Interactive mode: since November 2021 it is possible to use the BrainScaleS-2 single chip system also interactively from the EBRAINS collab (please use the "EBRAINS_release_..." kernel for running interactive scripts. See the "BrainScaleS-2 interactive demo does not work with error message "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pynn_brainscales'"" entry on 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 (use the "Raw" button at the file you want to download) or git clone the whole examples part.
• Via direct access: For "serious" use beyond testing and getting aquainted with the systems we can also provide direct ssh access to the system control servers. Please request this type of access via support@ebrains.eu

System types

For BrainScaleS three systems 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