NEOSIM: Portable large-scale plug and play modelling

NEOSIM is a new simulation framework addressed at building large scale and detailed models of the nervous system. Its essence is a set of interfaces a nd protocols that enable a plug and play architecture for incorporating exi sting simulation modules such as NEURON [4] and GENESIS [1] as well as futu re visualisation and data analysis modules. From the start it has been desi gned to exploit parallel and distributed computers to reduce simulation run times to manageable levels, without the additional modelling effort requir ed for earlier publicly-available parallel simulation tools. In this paper, we present the design of the NEOSIM framework, and discuss its applicabili ty to a range of modelling studies. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.