This lecture will introduce you to the issues involved in distributing a simulation of a network model amongst multiple processors. This is static load balancing - cells do not move Hence dedicated access to the CPUs is required for effective decomposition Easier if identically configured CPUs. The same network distributed among more nodes will result in more of these expensive synapses.
More nodes can be counterproductive.
The time spent communicating can overwhelm the time spent computing. In network models, axonal delays L are large compared to the simulation time step. A by the minimum of all the axonal delays on the connections from cells on A to synapses on B. This is called the lookahead of B with respect to A. Processors need only be loosely synchronized. Goal is to maximize the lookahead between every pair of nodes. The getlookahead command reports the current settings.