Computing beyond a million processors - bio-inspired massively parallel architectures

The SpiNNaker project aims to deliver a computing system that incorporates a million embedded ARM processors with the objective of supporting simulations of very large-scale systems of spiking neurons in real time. The project offers opportunities for PhD projects across a wide range of subject areas from networks-on-chip through real-time execution management all the way up to building neural models of specific regions of the brain.

There are challenges in this project from understanding brain function at the highest level, through automatic mapping of neural models onto a highly distributed computation platform down to architecture optimisation and run-time fault and energy management.