The exascale era of supercomputing has arrived, with early applications of confirmed systems such as quantum circuit simulation, nuclear fusion energy, and advanced spectroscopy. Two researchers from the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany, Katrin Amunts and Thomas Lippert, have now published a paper. chemistry It details brain research, another field that will soon need such computing power.
The authors explain that the adult brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons. “Processing and analyzing the entire human brain at cellular resolution is a huge challenge,” they wrote, adding, “Currently, reaching individual axons at the whole-brain level is out of reach. It’s in,’ he adds. They detail what it takes to move to the axonal level of whole-brain analysis and incorporate other elements of brain tissue such as molecular structure and temporal changes.
“These efforts set the requirements for high-performance computing technology,” they wrote, noting that optimized representations of brain fibers “are not possible with current petascale technology, but will be possible in the exascale future.” of computing power.”[.]Specifically, it also emphasizes the need for “modular, interactive concepts for future supercomputing” and “exabyte-scale parallel file systems” that can be accessed in the cloud by the broader research community.

Jülich researchers are no strangers to brain research. Currently hosting his JUWELS, the most powerful officially ranked supercomputer in Europe, the center is already leveraging the modular capabilities of that system to develop high-level brain modeling. The center continues to work on the development of “his three-dimensional and realistic model of the human brain” and participates in the European Union’s Human Brain Project. Researchers advance our knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, computing, and brain-related medicine. “
“Understanding the complex brain requires insights from multiple scales, from genomics, cells and synapses to the level of whole organs. Jülich Research Center for Medicine (INM-1). It means handling, and supercomputing is becoming an essential tool for working with the brain.”
Thomas Lippert, director of the Jülich Supercomputing Center, supercomputing lead for the Human Brain Project, and co-author of this article, adds: “There are many new demands coming from researchers in the neuroscience community that require powerful computing to tackle the complexity of the brain. I have.”
To learn more about the future of supercomputing for brain research, read the following articles: chemistry“Brain Research Challenges Supercomputing,” by Katrin Amunts and Thomas Lippert.