Using Brian2GeNN¶
Brian supports generating standalone code for multiple devices. In this mode, running a Brian script generates source code in a project tree for the target device/language. This code can then be compiled and run on the device, and modified if needed. The Brian2GeNN package provides such a ‘device’ to run Brian 2 code on the GeNN (GPU enhanced Neuronal Networks) backend. GeNN is in itself a code-generation based framework to generate and execute code for NVIDIA CUDA. Through Brian2GeNN one can hence generate and run CUDA code on NVIDIA GPUs based solely in Brian 2 input.
Installing the Brian2GeNN interface¶
In order to use the Brian2GeNN interface, all three Brian 2, GeNN and Brian2GeNN need to be fully installed. To install GeNN and Brian 2, refer to their respective documentation:
Note that you will have to also install the CUDA toolkit and driver necessary
to run simulations on a NVIDIA graphics card. These will have to be installed
manually, e.g. from NVIDIA’s web site
(you can always run simulations in the “CPU-only” mode, but that of course
defeats the main purpose of Brian2GeNN…). Depending on the installation
method, you might also have to manually set the CUDA_PATH
environment
variable (or alternatively the devices.genn.cuda_path preference) to point to
CUDA’s installation directory.
To install brian2genn, use pip
:
pip install brian2genn
(might require administrator privileges depending on the configuration of your
system; add --user
to force an installation with user privileges only).
As detailed in the GeNN installation instructions),
you need to set the GENN_PATH
environment variable to the GeNN installation
directory. Alternatively, you can set the devices.genn.path preference to the
sam effect.
Note
We no longer provide conda packages for Brian2GeNN. Conda packages for
previous versions of Brian2GeNN have been tagged with the archive
label
and are still available in the brian-team
channel.
Using the Brian2GeNN interface¶
To use the interface one then needs to import the brian2genn interface:
import brian2genn
The you need to choose the ‘genn’ device at the beginning of the Brian 2 script, i.e. after the import statements, add:
set_device('genn')
At the encounter of the first run
statement (Brian2GeNN does currently
only support a single run
statement per script), code for GeNN will be
generated, compiled and executed.
The set_device
function can also take additional arguments, e.g. to run
GeNN in its “CPU-only” mode and to get additional debugging output, use:
set_device('genn', useGPU=False, debug=True)
Not all features of Brian work with Brian2GeNN. The current list of excluded features is detailed in Unsupported features in Brian2GeNN.