The brain modelling project is a collaboration between Japanese research group RIKEN, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University and Forschungszentrum Jülich, an interdisciplinary research center based in Germany and is the worlds biggest neuronal network simulation to date. They modeled 1 second of brain activity using world’s fourth largest supercomputer called K computer. K computer which is stationed at RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) Japan has been made by Fujitsu and is powered by a SPARC64 VIIIfx 8C 2GHz processor. The K computer has a massive 705,024 processor cores and 1.4 million GB of RAM of computing power. Even with such humongous power, the K computer took 40 minutes to crunch the data for just one second of brain activity, which really shows us how complex organ the brain is. The scientists used the open-source Neural Simulation Technology (NEST) tool to replicate a network consisting of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses. While significant in size, the simulated network represented just one per cent of the neuronal network in the human brain. The main goal of the research team was to test the limits of simulation technology and the capabilities of K computer so the success of K computer in modelling the brain is a huge bonus for the science community as they can now work on devoting more resources to human brain simulation.
