Scaling to 1024 software processes and hardware cores of the distributed simulation of a spiking neural network including up to 20G synapses

This short report describes the scaling, up to 1024 software processes and hardware cores, of a distributed simulator of plastic spiking neural networks (DPSNN). A previous report demonstrated good scalability of the simulator up to 128 processes. Herein we extend the speed-up measurements and strong and weak scaling analysis of the simulator to the range between 1 and 1024 software processes and hardware cores. We simulated twodimensional grids of cortical columns including up to ~20G synapses connecting ~11M neurons. The neural network was distributed over a set of MPI processes and the simulations were run on a server platform composed of up to 64 dual-socket nodes, each socket equipped with Intel Xeon Haswell E5-2630 v3 processors (8 cores @ 2.40GHz clock). All nodes are interconnected through an InfiniBand network. The DPSNN simulator has been developed by INFN in the framework of EURETILE and CORTICONIC European FET projects and will be used by the WaveScalES team in the framework of the Human Brain Project (HBP), SubProject3 – Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience. This report lays the groundwork for a more thorough comparison with the neuronal simulation tool NEST.