SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd Installation Guide

Follow me on GitHub

This page describes an older version. Please see the latest version or home page

This guide details how to install the release version of the tools required to run simulations on SpiNNaker using the SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd interface.

Installation

You must first install the Python Dependencies. Continue to the Virtualenv Installation, Standard Central Installation or User-only Installation to install the remaining requirements, depending on the needs of your working environment. If you are unsure what to choose, the option that will most likely work is the Virtualenv Installation.

Virtualenv Installation

Follow these instructions to install the dependencies in a virtual environment.

If you already have installed the SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd previously, you will need to uninstall it:

  1. Activate your virtualenv, <name>

    source <name>/bin/activate

  2. Uninstall the existing tools

    [sudo] pip uninstall SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

Remember, to install the tools, first activate your virtualenv, <name>

source <name>/bin/activate

  1. Install SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

    pip install SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

You can now configure your environment.

Standard Central Installation

These instructions will install the required packages in a central location. If you are installing on Linux, you must have root access to do this (or prepend each command with sudo), and Windows users should run these commands from a command prompt run as Administrator (right-click the shortcut for the command prompt and select “Run as administrator” — without the sudo).

  1. If you already have installed the SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd previously, you will need to uninstall it:

    [sudo] pip uninstall SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

  2. Install SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

    [sudo] pip install SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

You can now configure your environment.

User-only Installation

These instructions will install the required packages only for the current user (in your home directory). This can avoid issues where you don’t have root access to the machine you are installing on, or on a shared machine where the dependencies might otherwise conflict with those of other users.

  1. If you already have installed the SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd previously, you will need to uninstall it:

    [sudo] pip uninstall SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

  2. Install SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd

    pip install SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd --user

You can now configure your environment.

Configuration

When the SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd is first called, if a configuration file is not found, it will create one in your home directory and exit. It is possible to ask SpiNNakerGraphFrontEnd to do this before you run your first simulation as follows:

python -c "import spinnaker_graph_front_end"

Note that if you have previously installed a version of the spiNNaker software, you may already have a file called .spiNNakerGraphFrontEnd.cfg in your home directory. In this case, SpyNNaker will attempt to use this file for its parameters. If you don’t have this file, a new file called .spyNNakerGraphFrontEnd.cfg will be created in your home directory. You must edit this file to ensure that SpyNNaker can access your SpiNNaker machine. Upon opening this file, the part to alter will look like the following:

[Machine]
machineName = None
version = None

If you have a SpiNNaker board, then go to Local Board if you do not have a SpiNNaker board, please follow the instructions in Instructions on how to use the different front ends in virtual mode and then go to Running some examples.

Local Board

Within the file, you should set machineName to the IP address or hostname of your SpiNNaker machine, and version to the version of your SpiNNaker board; this will almost certainly be “3” for a 4-chip board or “5” on a 48-chip board.

The default IP address for a spinn-3 board is 192.168.240.253 and the default IP address for a spinn-5 board is 192.168.240.1.

Network Configuration

  1. Go to the network settings for your computer and add or set an IPv4 entry with the following address for the adapter connected to the SpiNNaker board:

    • IP address = 192.168.240.254
    • sub-mask = 255.255.255.0
    • default gateway = 0.0.0.0

Running some examples

  1. Run:

    python -m spinnaker_graph_front_end.examples.hello_world.hello_world

  2. You will see the system go through a series of processes from partitioning, to placement, to routing and finally to loading and running, followed by a list of outputs of “Hello World” (one for each core on your board).

If you get this output, you have successfully installed your system.

Troubleshooting

  1. If you experience the error:

    **UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 1: ordinal not in range(128)**

    Then to solve it, edit C:\Python27\Lib\mimetypes.py and add these codes:

    if sys.getdefaultencoding() != 'gbk':
    reload(sys)
    sys.setdefaultencoding('gbk')

    before the following line:

    default_encoding = sys.getdefaultencoding()