A novel parallel clock-driven algorithm for simulation of neuronal networks based on virtual synapse. (April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Zhijie; Peng, Xia; Han, Fang; Song, Guangxiao
• Is Part Of: Simulation. Volume 96:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 415
• Page End: 427
• Publication Date: 2020-04
• Subjects: Clock-driven algorithm -- synaptic current -- neuronal network -- graphics processor -- spiking neural network; Computer simulation -- Periodicals; 003.3
• DOI: 10.1177/0037549720903804
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0037-5497

Abstract

The traditional clock-driven algorithm is very time-consuming when performed on large-scale neuronal networks due to the huge number of synaptic currents computation and low performance of the parallel implementation of the algorithm. We find in this paper that the conductance coefficients of all the synapses coming from the same presynaptic neuron (neuroni for example) does not need to be computed one by one, rather only one common conductance coefficient needs to be computed for all synapses from this neuron. We then propose an idea of virtual synapse for neuroni to compute this common conductance coefficient and thereby haveN (N is the number of neurons in the network) virtual synapses for all presynaptic neurons in the network. Since each common conductance depends on only the spiking activity of the presynaptic neuroni and is irrelevant of postsynaptic neurons, the computation of the different virtual synapses can be deployed to different computer processing unit efficiently. By introducing a circular data structure for the virtual synapses, we present a novel parallel clock-driven algorithm based on graphics processors for simulation of neuronal networks. It is demonstrated by test results that the proposed algorithm reduces memory and time consumption greatly, and improves the performance of the parallelization for large-scale neuronal network simulations effectively.