Many of the genes and proteins expressed in the mammalian brain are also conserved in the genome of Drosophila. Despite the obvious differences in size and complexity between the mammalian and fruit fly brains, researchers dating back to Cajal have observed common design principles in the structure of their sensory subsystems. The nervous system of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster possesses a range of features that recommend it as a model organism of choice for relating brain structure to function. Successful development of human brain models must therefore be preceded by an increased understanding of the structural/ architectural complexity of the more tractable brains of simpler organisms and how they implement specific information processing functions and govern behavior. The human brain is an obvious and tantalizing target of this effort however, its structural and architectural complexity place severe limitations upon the extent to which models built and executed with currently available computational technology can relate its biological structure to its information processing capabilities. Reverse engineering the information processing functions of the brain is an engineering grand challenge of immense interest that has the potential to drive important advances in computer architecture, artificial intelligence, and medicine. We also illustrate Neurokernel’s ability to take advantage of direct GPU-to-GPU data transfers with benchmarks that demonstrate scaling of Neurokernel’s communication performance both over the number of interface ports exposed by an emulation’s constituent modules and the total number of modules comprised by an emulation. We demonstrate the power of Neurokernel’s model integration by combining independently developed models of the retina and lamina neuropils in the fly’s visual system and by demonstrating their neuroinformation processing capability. By defining mandatory communication interfaces that specify how data is transmitted between models of each of these modules regardless of their internal design, Neurokernel explicitly enables multiple researchers to collaboratively model the fruit fly’s entire brain by integration of their independently developed models of its constituent processing units.
![lpu e connect result 2015 lpu e connect result 2015](https://img.yumpu.com/26394010/1/500x640/henry-p-operto-s-lallemand-s-dessa-j-x-martin-v-noble-m-.jpg)
Neurokernel provides a programming model that capitalizes upon the structural organization of the fly brain into a fixed number of functional modules to distinguish between these modules’ local information processing capabilities and the connectivity patterns that link them.
#Lpu e connect result 2015 software#
We have developed an open software platform called Neurokernel for collaborative development of comprehensive models of the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and their execution and testing on multiple Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).