Dear NEST Users & Developers!
I would like to invite you to our next fortnightly Open NEST Developer Video Conference today
*Monday May 18, at 11:30 CEST (UTC+0200).*
As usual, in the Project team round, a contact person of each team will give a short statement summarizing ongoing and planned work in the team and highlight cross-cutting points that need discussion among the teams. The remainder of the meeting we would go into a more in-depth discussion of topics that came up on the mailing list or that are suggested by the teams.
Feel free to join the meeting also if it’s just to bring your own quick questions for direct discussion in the in-depth section.
Agenda
* Welcome
* Review of NEST User Mailing List
* Project team round
* In-depth discussion
The agenda for this meeting is also available online, see https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2026-05-18-Open-NEST-Developer-… <https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2026-05-18-Open-NEST-Developer-…>
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Cheers,
Dennis Terhorst
Log-in information
We use a virtual conference room provided by DFN <https://www.dfn.de/en/> (Deutsches Forschungsnetz).
You can use the web client to connect. We however encourage everyone to use a headset for better audio quality or even a proper video conferencing system (see below) or software when available.
Web client
* Visit https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800 <https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800>
* Enter your name and allow your browser to use camera and microphone
* The conference does not need a PIN to join, just click join and you’re in.
In case you see a dfnconf logo and the phrase “Auf den Meetingveranstalter warten”, just be patient, the meeting host needs to join first (a voice will tell you).
VC system/software
How to log in with a video conferencing system, depends on you VC system or software.
* Using the H.323 protocol (eg Polycom): |vc.dfn.net##97938800| or |194.95.240.2##97938800|
* Using the SIP protocol:97938800@vc.dfn.de <mailto:97938800@vc.dfn.de>
* By telephone: |+49-30-200-97938800|
For those who do not have a video conference system or suitable software, Polycom provides a pretty good free app for iOS and Android, so you can join from your tablet (Polycom RealPresence Mobile, available from AppStore/PlayStore). Note that firewalls may interfere with videoconferencing in various and sometimes confusing ways.
For more technical information on logging in from various VC systems, please see
http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4 <http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4>
--
Dipl.-Phys. Dennis Terhorst
Coordinator Software Development
Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6)
Computational and Systems Neuroscience
&
JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10)
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine
Jülich Research Center, Member of the Helmholz Association
52425 Jülich, Germany
http://www.csn.fz-juelich.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
52425 Jülich
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Jülich
Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Düren Nr. HR B 3498
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Stefan Müller
Geschäftsführung: Prof. Dr. Astrid Lambrecht (Vorsitzende),
Dr. Stephanie Bauer (stellvertretende Vorsitzende),
Prof. Dr. Ir. Pieter Jansens, Prof. Dr. Laurens Kuipers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear users and developers,
in preparation for the NEST 3.10 release, the pre-release version NEST 3.10-rc1 <https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v3.10_rc1> is now available for testing.
This long-awaited release changes the inner structure by removing the legacy simulation language interface (SLI) layer and promoting PyNEST as primary user interface. People already using NEST via Python will benefit from the cleaner function calls, /without any changes necessary to their code/. Depending on the model setup, instantiation of large models may be noticeably faster.
Additionally to the traditional install methods, the new version will be available in an unoptimized, non-MPI version via "pip install nest-simulator" once the release is complete. Due to a quirk in the process the pre-release version however is currently not installable with the usual "--pre" flag. If you want to test the pre-release version use `pip install nest-simulator==3.10rc1` as a workaround for now (we "yanked" the rc-version from PyPI).
Note that pre-releases are not fully tested and will be removed after the actual release is complete, so don't base your work on it.
Let us know about your experience! We'd be happy to hear where we can improve, and even happier to hear if you're happy.
If everything goes well, we're looking forward to the full release in the coming days and will announce it accordingly.
Best,
Dennis
https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v3.10_rc1
--
Dipl.-Phys. Dennis Terhorst
Coordinator Software Development
Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6)
Computational and Systems Neuroscience
&
JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10)
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine
Jülich Research Center, Member of the Helmholz Association
52425 Jülich, Germany
http://www.csn.fz-juelich.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
52425 Jülich
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Jülich
Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Düren Nr. HR B 3498
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Stefan Müller
Geschäftsführung: Prof. Dr. Astrid Lambrecht (Vorsitzende),
Dr. Stephanie Bauer (stellvertretende Vorsitzende),
Prof. Dr. Ir. Pieter Jansens, Prof. Dr. Laurens Kuipers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear NEST Users and Developers,
Today is an exciting day in the history of NEST: The NEST Simulator is now part of the SPEC CPU 2026 industry benchmark.
You can find the list of benchmarks here https://www.spec.org/cpu2026/docs/overview.html#Q13, where NEST is included with two cases (single and multithreaded).
SPECrate®2026 Floating Point: nest.767_r
SPECspeed®2026 Floating Point: nest.867_s
For more on SPEC CPU 2026, see
Madhav, M., Lee, A., Mejia, A., Moore, B., Soppadandi, C., Cambly, C., Müllner, C., Bowers, D., Reiner, D., Bakhvalov, D., Zhao, D., Voth, D., Xue, F., Silber-Chaussumier, F., Bucek, J., Southern, J., Liu, J., Himer, J., Henning, J., … Todorovski, Z. (2026).
SPEC CPU: The Next Generation (Version 1).
arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2605.01575
The two-year process of getting NEST ready for SPEC CPU 2026 is documented in the now closed issue https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/issues/3217.
I consider the inclusion of the NEST Simulator in the SPEC CPU 2026 industry benchmark a tremendous validation of over 30 years of focused work on quality research software engineering and would like to thank all who have contributed to NEST code for making this success possible. I'd also like to thank Mahesh Madhav from Ampere Computing for promoting NEST as a SPEC CPU test case and for the excellent collaboration in getting NEST ready for the benchmark.
All the best!
Hans Ekkehard
--
Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser
Research Committee Chair, Faculty of Science and Technology
Department of Data Science
Faculty of Science and Technology
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway
Phone +47 6723 1560
Email hans.ekkehard.plesser(a)nmbu.no<mailto:hans.ekkehard.plesser@nmbu.no>
Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser
Dear NEST Users & Developers!
I would like to invite you to our next fortnightly Open NEST Developer Video Conference today
*Monday May 4, at 11:30 CEST (UTC+0200).*
As usual, in the Project team round, a contact person of each team will give a short statement summarizing ongoing and planned work in the team and highlight cross-cutting points that need discussion among the teams. The remainder of the meeting we would go into a more in-depth discussion of topics that came up on the mailing list or that are suggested by the teams.
Feel free to join the meeting also if it’s just to bring your own quick questions for direct discussion in the in-depth section.
Agenda
* Welcome
* Review of NEST User Mailing List
* Project team round
* In-depth discussion
The agenda for this meeting is also available online, see https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2026-05-04-Open-NEST-Developer-… <https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/wiki/2026-05-04-Open-NEST-Developer-…>
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Cheers,
Dennis Terhorst
Log-in information
We use a virtual conference room provided by DFN <https://www.dfn.de/en/> (Deutsches Forschungsnetz).
You can use the web client to connect. We however encourage everyone to use a headset for better audio quality or even a proper video conferencing system (see below) or software when available.
Web client
* Visit https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800 <https://conf.dfn.de/webapp/conference/97938800>
* Enter your name and allow your browser to use camera and microphone
* The conference does not need a PIN to join, just click join and you’re in.
In case you see a dfnconf logo and the phrase “Auf den Meetingveranstalter warten”, just be patient, the meeting host needs to join first (a voice will tell you).
VC system/software
How to log in with a video conferencing system, depends on you VC system or software.
* Using the H.323 protocol (eg Polycom): |vc.dfn.net##97938800| or |194.95.240.2##97938800|
* Using the SIP protocol:97938800@vc.dfn.de <mailto:97938800@vc.dfn.de>
* By telephone: |+49-30-200-97938800|
For those who do not have a video conference system or suitable software, Polycom provides a pretty good free app for iOS and Android, so you can join from your tablet (Polycom RealPresence Mobile, available from AppStore/PlayStore). Note that firewalls may interfere with videoconferencing in various and sometimes confusing ways.
For more technical information on logging in from various VC systems, please see
http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4 <http://vcc.zih.tu-dresden.de/index.php?linkid=1.1.3.4>
--
Dipl.-Phys. Dennis Terhorst
Coordinator Software Development
Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6)
Computational and Systems Neuroscience
&
JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10)
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine
Jülich Research Center, Member of the Helmholz Association
52425 Jülich, Germany
http://www.csn.fz-juelich.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
52425 Jülich
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Jülich
Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Düren Nr. HR B 3498
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Stefan Müller
Geschäftsführung: Prof. Dr. Astrid Lambrecht (Vorsitzende),
Dr. Stephanie Bauer (stellvertretende Vorsitzende),
Prof. Dr. Ir. Pieter Jansens, Prof. Dr. Laurens Kuipers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------