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On the path toward brain-scale simulations

Today’s high-performance computing systems are nearing an ability to simulate the human brain at scale. This presents a new challenge: going forward, will the bigger challenge be the brain’s size or its complexity?

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Fig. 1: Estimation of computational costs of full-brain simulations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Aimone for copyediting assistance. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the US Department of Energy or the United States Government. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

We acknowledge support from the DOE Office of Science ASCR Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) and the DOE NNSA Advanced Simulation and Computing program.

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  1. Neural Exploration and Research Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Felix Wang & James B. Aimone

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  1. Felix Wang
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James B. Aimone.

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Wang, F., Aimone, J.B. On the path toward brain-scale simulations.
Nat Comput Sci (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00743-z

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  • Published: 19 December 2024

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-024-00743-z

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