CARLsim is an efficient, easy-to-use, GPU-accelerated library for simulating large-scale spiking neural network (SNN) models with a high degree of biological detail. CARLsim allows execution of networks of Izhikevich spiking neurons with realistic synaptic dynamics on both generic x86 CPUs and standard off-the-shelf GPUs. The simulator provides a PyNN-like programming interface in C/C++, which allows for details and parameters to be specified at the synapse, neuron, and network level.

New features in CARLsim 6 include:

• CUDA 11 support
• CMake build system
• Neuromodulatory features
• Integration of Python LEAP

If you use CARLsim 6 in your research, please cite this paper:

Niedermeier, L., Chen, K., Xing, J., Das, A., Kopsick, J., Scott, E., Sutton, N., Weber, K., Dutt, N., and Krichmar, J.L. (2022). "CARLsim 6: An Open Source Library for Large-Scale, Biologically Detailed Spiking Neural Network Simulation." In Proceedings of IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), (To appear in WCCI IJCNN 2022).

Detailed instructions for installing the latest stable release of CARLsim on Linux and Windows can be found in our User Guide.

cd ~/git
git clone https://github.com/UCI-CARL/CARLsim6.git CARLsim6
cd CARLsim6
mkdir .build
cd .build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/user1/carlsim6 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../.
make install

Open a new terminal and validate the settings with env.

Start ~/carlsim6/samples/hello_world

CARLsim 6 comes with the following requirements:

• CMake 3.20 or higher
• CUDA Toolkit 11.0 or higher. For platform-specific CUDA installation instructions, please navigate to the NVIDIA CUDA Zone. This is only required if you want to run CARLsim in GPU_MODE. Make sure to install the CUDA samples, too, as CARLsim relies on the file helper_cuda.h.
• (optional) A GPU with compute capability 6.0 or higher. To find the compute capability of your device please refer to the CUDA article on Wikipedia. This is only required if you want to run CARLsim in GPU_MODE.
• (optional) MATLAB R2014a or Octave. This is only required if you want to use the Offline Analysis Toolbox (OAT).

If the Prerequisites cannot be met consider using a former version like CARLsim 5 or CARLsim 4.

The latest release was tested on the following platforms:

• Linux: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Windows: Windows 10 Professional, Windows 11 Education
• CUDA: 11.2, 11.4, 11.5, 11.7
• GPUs: Titan Xp, 1080ti, RTX 3090, A100