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International Workshop on Brain-Inspired Computing

BrainComp 2013: Brain-Inspired Computing pp 198–212Cite as

Supercomputing Infrastructure for Simulations of the Human Brain

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8603))

Abstract

Decoding the human brain is considered as one of the greatest challenges faced by \(21^\mathrm{st}\) century science. Advancing brain research by simulating the full human brain promises to provide profound insights into its complex functionality and into what makes us human. These insights will help to understand brain diseases and to develop novel treatments.

Modern high performance computing technology not only allows to bring these goals into focus, it might itself be transformed profoundly being guided towards the exascale and beyond. On the one hand, information and communication technology (ICT) provides us with a completely new understanding of the brain and its diseases. On the other hand, this understanding of the brain will lead inevitably to brain inspired, radical innovation in computing. In particular, the Human Brain Project, one of the two EU Flagship research projects, will require data-intensive HPC at an extreme scale and fully interactive visualization and steering capabilities. Eventually, revolutionary new computing technologies, so-called neuromorphic devices, are expected to become reality.

The following contribution outlines the plans for the HBP’s High Performance Computing (HPC) platform. A central brain simulation system at Jülich Research Centre, Germany, is planned to be operated as a user facility. It will provide the optimized hardware-software environment running a full virtual human brain model. Neuroscientists will be enabled to carry out in-silico experiments based on this model. The platform will be complemented by a software development system at CSCS in Lugano, Switzerland, and a third system will be running efficient molecular-level simulations at BSC in Barcelona, Spain. Finally, a system adapted to support massive data analytics will be hosted at CINECA in Bologna, Italy. During the ramp-up phase of the project (2013-2916), the HBP will link with PRACE institutions that have expressed their interest in adding in-kind support to the Platform and will try to motivate PRACE to establish programmatic access to PRACE systems, in order to allow peer-reviewed usage of the entire European Tier-0 capability.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See M. Diesmann, these proceedings [18].

  2. 2.

    The fields “programming paradigms” will be presented as a contribution by Jesús Labarta [20], the field “interactive visualization” is found in the contribution of Torsten Kuhlen [21].

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Acknowledgments

In its ramp-up phase, the Human Brain Project is funded primarily by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement \(\mathcal {N}^{\mathrm {o.}}\) 604102. The Helmholtz Association supports the interdisciplinary collaboration between the Helmholtz programmes “Decoding the Human Brain” and “Supercomputing and Big Data” through funding of the Helmholtz Portfolio “Supercomputing and Modeling for the Human Brain” (SMHB). The SMHB hosts the Simulation Laboratory “Neuroscience” at Jülich Supercomputing Centre, which is partly funded by the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) and which is a member of the German National Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience. We thank Katrin Amunts, Markus Axer, Sonja Grün, Markus Diesmann, Thomas Schulthess and Felix Schürmann for provision of graphical material and for many fruitful and inspiring discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    Thomas Lippert & Boris Orth

  2. Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Jülich, Germany

    Thomas Lippert & Boris Orth

Authors
  1. Thomas Lippert
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  2. Boris Orth
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Correspondence to Thomas Lippert .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, University of Calabria, Arcavacada di Rende, Italy

    Lucio Grandinetti

  2. Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Jülich, Germany

    Thomas Lippert

  3. Computing Science, University of Groningen Institute for Mathematics &, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Nicolai Petkov

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Lippert, T., Orth, B. (2014). Supercomputing Infrastructure for Simulations of the Human Brain. In: Grandinetti, L., Lippert, T., Petkov, N. (eds) Brain-Inspired Computing. BrainComp 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8603. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12084-3_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12084-3_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12083-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12084-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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