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. 2015 Jul 31;9:19. doi: 10.3389/fninf.2015.00019

Figure 8.

Figure 8

Comparison of the simulation times of different simulators depending on the number of threads on a shared-memory system. The parallel performance of the simulators Brian (version 1.4.1), Brian 2 (version 2.0b3), NEST (with Python bindings, version 2.4.2), Auryn (version 0.4.1), and ANNarchy (version 4.4.0) are investigated up to 12 threads. Two versions of NEST are used: one using the Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg 4(5) method (noted NEST-RK45), and a patched version using the explicit Euler method (NEST-Euler). The simulation times are normalized to show the real-time ratio: a normalized time of 1 means that simulating the network for 1 s takes exactly 1 s of computer time (simulations are run for 10 s). Both axes use a logarithmic scale. Brian only allows single-threaded simulations. Brian 2, NEST and ANNarchy use OpenMP, while Auryn uses MPI (openMPI 1.4.3). Auryn only allows a number of processes which is a multiple of 2. The single-threaded version of ANNarchy compares well to other neural simulators, but its scaling properties are not optimal compared to NEST.