The Rallpacks are a set of benchmarks for evaluating neuronal simuators.
The original idea was proposed at the Analysis and Modeling of Neural
Systems meeting in San Francisco in July 1991.
This is an updated version, incorporating suggestions from many people.
We would like to express our appreciation to everyone who helped with the
original ideas and development of the Rallpacks. A partial list includes
Frank Eeckman, Erik De Schutter, John Miller, Michael Hines, Mark Nelson,
Tony Zador, and of course, Wilfrid Rall, who pioneered much of
the field and kindly consented to have his name associated with these
benchmarks.
The models and C programs are identical to the previous version, except for
slight improvements to comparisons/srms.c to improve its ability to handle
unexpected spike shapes.
The definitions of the performance measures have changed substantially, but
should be easy to derive from older values. An effort has been made to
choose performance measures which are independent of model size.
The specification of the format of the report is hopefully more precise.
The models allow more flexibility in model size and timestep in order to
accomodate simulators running on less powerful machines, or using different
kinds of integration methods.
Feedback in terms of suggestions for further improvements, and as results
for simulators tested using the Rallpacks, would be greatly appreciated.
Upinder S. Bhalla, Dav