NeMo is a neuromorphic hardware simulation leveraging the extremely fast and slim ROSS engine. Simulation of various neuromorphic hardware is supported.

Features

• Distributed simulation - Using MPI, NeMo will run on large-scale compute clusters
• Capable of simulating large scale hardware
  • Using ROSS, NeMo was able to scale a simulation of millions of neurons across over 65,000 processors
• NEW: New neuron models can be added to the simulation by subclassing the base neuron model.
• Hardware configurations, models, and input spikes are generic JSON files.
• Preliminary neuromorphic process scheduling support

Contents

• Features
• Requirements & Building
• Usage and Examples
• Configuration File Documentation
• Neuromorphic OS Development
• Test Data
• Development
• References

Requirements and Building

In order to build NeMo you will need:

• An installed MPI implementation for your system. OpenMPI and MPICH are good options. In general, any MPI compatible with ROSS will work.
• A mostly C++ 14 compatible compiler
  • Tested with GCC , Clang, and IBM XLC++ 14
• CMake - But current dev branch is using CMake 3.15

Building

uses CMAKE to build libraries and binaries (apps and tests). Execute following commands to build NeMo·2 using CMAKE:

1. mkdir build
2. cd build
3. cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
4. make nemo2 ← makes the primary program.

Tests can be made using make tests.
This will create binaries in bin/ and ./ directory and libraries in lib/ directory. Tests are built under the tests folder. An example configuration file is copied to the <BUILD FOLDER>/config from the example config folder.

A future release will include a smaller test application!

More detailed install instructions are coming in the Wiki

Usage and Examples

To run :

As a Sequential Run (Not Distributed):

./nemo2 --cfg:<PATH_TO_CONFIG_FILE.json>

Distributed:

mpirun -np XX  ./nemo2 --cfg:<PATH_TO_CONFIG_FILE.JSON> --synch=[2|3|5] 

There are many configuration tweaks for the ROSS simulation as well as other config options for NeMo·2. To get a list of options run:

./nemo2 --help

Most of 's options are handled by the configuration file.

Configuration File Documentation

's configuration file is a standard JSON document. Details will be coming in the Wiki.

note: expects a JSON standard that does not have line comments. The examples below contain comments to help explain the sections, but do not use them in your config file.

Some helpful config options are:

JSON Setting | Details

Setting	Details
GLOBAL_DEBUG,	Global Debug - True prints out a lot of info
ns_cores_per_chip	How many neurosynaptic cores exist per chip?
total_chips	Total number of chips in the simulation
do_neuro_os	Activate neuromorphic OS
sched_type	Scheduling algorithm
save_nos_stats	Save neuromorphic operating system stats
save_all_spikese	Save all output spike files
save_membrane_pots	Save per-event membrane potentials
neurons_per_core	Neurons per neurosynaptic core
output_spike_file	Where to save output spike files
output_nos_stat_file	Where to save neuromorphic OS files
output_membrane_pot_file	Where to save membrane potential record
	MODELS
id	Model ID. Must be in sequence and unique (0,1...)
needed_cores	NS cores needed by model. 0 indicates the model file will set this
model_file_path": "./models/cifar_100_model	Path to the JSON model file
spike_file_path": "./cifar_100_spike	Path to the spike JSON (messagepack supported as well) file
requested_time,	Time requested for the model. 0 indicates forever (queue up all input spikes)
benchmark_model_name":	If this is a benchmark model, specifiy it here. File paths are ignored in this case.

Defaults for this file look like:

{
  "nemo_global": {
    "GLOBAL_DEBUG": true,
    "ns_cores_per_chip": 32,
    "total_chips": 2,
    "do_neuro_os": false,
    "sched_type": "FCFS",
    "save_nos_stats": true,
    "save_all_spikes": false,
    "save_membrane_pots": false,
    "neurons_per_core": 256,
    "output_spike_file": "./model_output.csv",
    "output_nos_stat_file" : "./output_nos_stat_file.csv",
    "output_membrane_pot_file": "./output_membrane_pot.csv",
    "core_type_ids": [
      0,
      1
    ]
  },
  "models":[
  "MODELS GO HERE"
  ]
  }
}

Neuromorphic OS Development

Currently under development - Neuro OS features the ability to run spike based neuron process scheduling. More to come.

Test Data

A few demo models are available. We are finding a hosting provider to store them, as a model file in is quite a large file.

Development

Under massive development.

Current Work

References

Check out the original NeMo simulating many millions of neurons on a BlueGeneQ!