Compiled code

Compiled C code can be used in several places in Brian to get speed improvements in cases where performance is the most important factor.

Weave

Weave is a SciPy module that allows the use of inlined C++ code. Brian by default doesn’t use any C++ optimisations for maximum compatibility across platforms, but you can enable several optimised versions of Brian objects and functions by enabling weave compilation. See Preferences for more information.

See also Vectorisation for some information on writing your own inlined C++ code using Weave.

C++ objects

For maximum compatibility, Brian works with pure Python only. However, as well as the optional weave optimisations, there are also objects can run with a pure C++ version for a considerable speedup. For this to work, you need a copy of the gcc compiler installed (either on Linux, Mac or through cygwin on Windows) to build them. During installation (via easy_install, pip or with python setup.py install), two objects are compiled automatically: brian.utils.fastexp.fastexp (providing a fast, approximate exponential function) and brian.utils.ccircular.ccircular (a circular array data structure). If the compilation fails, a warning message will be displayed and the pure Python versions used instead.

In addition, it is possible to compile a C++ version of a more recent datastructure underlying the Synapses object, the SpikeQueue. To compile this object, follow these instructions:

In a command prompt or shell window, go to the directory where Brian is installed. On Windows this will probably be C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\brian. Now go to the experimental/cspikequeue folder. If you’re on Linux (and this may also work for Mac) run the command python setup.py build_ext --inplace. If you’re on Windows you’ll need to have cygwin with gcc installed, and then you run setup.py build_ext --inplace -c mingw32 instead. You should see some compilation, possibly with some warnings but no errors.

If all works OK, you should see a UserWarning when importing Brian. You can uninstall (and effectively switch off) the use of the C++ SpikeQueue by removing the *.so file in the experimental/cspikequeue/ directory. Repeating the steps above (i.e. recompiling the object) will re-enable the C SpikeQueue.

The same steps can also be used for compiling the ccircular or fastexp if they were not already compiled automatically during installation, just navigate to the respective directory.

Automatically generated C code

There is an experimental module for automatic generation of C code, see Code generation.