The FACETS Project

	PyNN is a is a simulator-independent language for building neuronal network models. Its development started in the FACETS project and is maintained on neuralensemble.org. More on PyNN
	FET: Future and Emerging Technologies of the EU (FP6)

Info:

• The FACETS research project ended on 31 August 2010. The project results are summarized in the FACETS summary flyer.pdf
• The FACETS-ITN Marie-Curie initital training network for graduate training continues until August 2013
• The BrainScaleS project builds on and extends the research done in FACETS. This 4 year project started on 1 January 2011

The goal of the FACETS (Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States) project was to create a theoretical and experimental foundation for the realisation of novel computing paradigms which exploit the concepts experimentally observed in biological nervous systems. The continuous interaction and scientific exchange between biological experiments, computer modelling and hardware emulations within the project provides a unique research infrastructure that will in turn provide an improved insight into the computing principles of the brain. This insight may potentially contribute to an improved understanding of mental disorders in the human brain and help to develop remedies.

Already achieved results are described primarily in scientific publications and deliverables. Some of the developed software tools, most notably the PyNN language, are now also applied outside of the FACETS project.

The international and interdisciplinary research project FACETS was funded by the European Commission in the framework of the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme. Within this programme, Future Emerging Technologies (FET) is defined as the 'programme nursery' of IST, in which basic research on novel concepts of information processing beyond the classical Turing approach are studied. FACETS is an integrated project within the biologically inspired information systems branch.

Please find out more about this research activity in our public research section.

Jan 2010: Our media section contains a new movie showing the FACETS demonstrator. This demonstrator is a software model of the currently implemented stage II FACETS hardware system with the surrounding software which is necessary to load networks onto the hardware and record data back: watch a small flash-version or download the movie file.mpg (619 MB)

Biological Experiments	Theoretical Studies and Computer-Based Models	Neural Hardware	Emerging Computational Paradigms