SpiNNMan

Used to communicate with a SpiNNaker Board. The main part of this package is the Transceiver class. This can be used to send and receive packets in various SpiNNaker formats, depending on what connections are available.

Functional Requirements

  1. Connect to and communicate with a machine using a number of different connections.

  2. Boot a machine with the expected version of the software.

    • If the machine is already booted but the version is not the version expected, an exception will be thrown.

  3. Check the version of the software which the machine is booted with.

  4. Query the state of the machine to determine:

    • What the current state of the machine is in terms of the chips and cores available, the SDRAM available on the chips and which links are available between which chips.

    • What external links to the host exist (and separately add the discovered links to the set of links used to communicate with the machine).

    • What is running on the machine and where, and what the current status of those processes are.

    • How many cores are in a given state.

    • What is in the IOBUF buffers.

    • What the current routing entries for a given router are.

    • What the routing status counter values are.

  5. Load application binaries on to the machine, either to individual cores or via a “flood-fill” mechanism to multiple cores simultaneously (which may be a subset of the cores on a subset of the chips).

  6. Write data to SDRAM, either on an individual chip, or via a “flood-fill” mechanism to multiple chips simultaneously.

  7. Send a signal to an application.

  8. Read data from SDRAM on an individual chip.

  9. Send and receive SpiNNaker packets where the connections allow this.

    • If no connection supports this packet type, an exception is thrown.

    • The user should be able to select which connection is used. Selection of a connection which does not support the traffic type will also result in an exception.

  10. Send and receive SCP and SDP packets where the connections allow this.

    • If no connection supports the packet type, an exception is thrown.

    • The user should be able to select which connection is used. Selection of a connection which does not support the traffic type will also result in an exception.

  11. It should be possible to call any of the functions simultaneously, including the same function more than once.

    • Where possible, multiple connections should be used to overlap calls.

    • The functions should not return until they have confirmed that any messages sent have been received, and any responses have been received.

    • Functions should not respond with the result of a different function.

    • Functions can further sub-divide the call into a number of separate calls that can be divided across the available connections, so long as the other requirements are met.

  12. More than one machine can be connected to the same host.

    • Once the subset of connections has been worked out for each machine, the operation of these machines should be independent.

Use Cases

  • Connecting is done by using create_transceiver_from_hostname().

  • boot_board() and get_scamp_version() are used to ensure that the board is booted correctly before starting a simulation.

  • get_machine_details() is used to get a representation of the current state of the machine, which is used to decide where executables are to be run on the board for a particular simulation, where any external peripherals are connected, and how messages between the executables and/or the external peripherals are to be routed.

  • write_memory() and execute() are used to write parameters and execute executables on the board

  • send_signal() is used to send a signal which starts, stops or pauses a simulation.

  • get_core_state_count() is used to determine if a simulation is complete or has gone into an error state.

  • get_iobuf(), get_cpu_infos() and get_router_diagnostics() are used to diagnose a problem with a simulation.

  • read_memory() is used to read some statistics recorded in SDRAM after a simulation.

Contents

Indices and tables