NEST 3.3

NEST 3.3 is the result of 525 commits by 20 developers since NEST 3.2 which was released on 2022-01-21.

Highlights of this release are

• improvements in parallel network construction time if large numbers of devices are present due to accelerated node lookups. In specific models this has been shown to reduce network construction time by a factor up to 20 (see #2290).

• NEST now has full support for generic compartmental neurons (#1895), which paves the way for studies investigating the effect of neuron model simplifications from rich multi-compartment models to simple point neurons within a single simulation framework.

Enhancement

• Accelerate node lookup in presence of many nodes without proxies
• Adding framework for compartmental models
• Update operator+= logic for composite NodeCollection
• Make sure node parameters can be iterables or Parameter when creating spatial nodes
• Make the C++ standard configurable

Bug

• Fix version information when not related to a release
• Fix issues encountered by the Fujitsu compiler
• Fix GHA clang format issue
• Fix modelName in external module
• Handle single node in PlotLayer
• Fix naming clash in Clopath plasticity neurons

Maintenance

• Temporary fix for noqa problems.
• Clean up the kernel in preparation for the module system refactoring
• Re-add version number for clang-format
• Fix search field on readthedocs
• Clean up and add links for compartmental model docs
• Fix static code check in CI
• Remove superfluous OpenMP barriers
• Make plot_weight_matrices.py run
• Update version in conf.py
• Update microcircuit reference data
• Clean up OpenMP pragmas
• Fix version warning
• Remove set sender node id from deliver events pr
• Replace UWSGI by Gunicorn to start NEST Server instance
• Fix typo in docstring
• Fix typo in tsodyks synapse documentation.
• Remove CMake options and other references to BlueGene and K-computer
• Update environment file with clang-format and cppcheck and update docs
• Add accuracy tests for precise models lacking them
• Reduce memory consumption in node creation with many threads
• Disallow specifying lists of synapse models
• Ensure membrane potential of non-linear neuron models is fully clamped during refractory phase
• Explain parrot neurons and clean up of NEST setup in Potjans_2014 documentation
• Remove installation of python2-dev from CI setup.
• Fix condition in bash script in case of non-existent variable
• Return empty dictionary if get() is called on empty SynapseCollection
• Remove unused variable and clean up comments
• Fix broken links in release notes
• Correct doc for with-python CMake option and remove Python 2 check.
• Fix clang 13 pedantic warnings