SpiNNaker: a platform for computing with spikes

Luis Plana: The SpiNNaker machine supports large-scale spiking neural networks that operate in biological real time with up to hundreds of million of neurons and hundreds of billions of synapses. So far demonstrations of the machine’s capabilities have been modest in scale, such as small-scale cortical microcolumn models and a stochastic spiking network that solves “diobolical” Sudoku problems, but the platform is now openly available under the auspices of the EU Flagship Human Brain Project, and we look forward to much larger, more challenging demonstrations over the next year or two!