KInNeSS
KInNeSS is a KDE Integrated NeuroSimulation Software. Integration here means that the software package distributed here provides a framework that can be easily expanded using standard KDE parts and plugin technology to incorporate a variety of different projects, like visual system, auditory system or memory system. The distribution contains two fully developed project environments, one for generic input, another for spatial navigation tasks, and a stub for a new project environment that advanced user can expand to his/her liking. The KInNeSS developers team provides full support for project environments in the distribution and will gladly help third party developers with whatever resources we can spare.

You can monitor recent changes in the CVS tree through KInNeSS html ChangeLog. It is updated every hour.


SANNDRA
SANNDRA is Synchronous Artificial Neuronal Networks Distributed Runtime Algorithm. KInNeSS uses it through its interface plugin as a core of all numeric simulations. It is singled out into a separate distribution, because it appears quite useful as standalone library. It operates on the Lego principle where it takes equations built from a set of provided or derived pieces, assembles them on the fly without recompillation, and integrates them. For a synchronous time-based system it is well optimized and quite fast. It contains a membrane equation and many of its standard components so you do not have to rewrite them.

You can monitor recent changes in the CVS tree through SANNDRA html ChangeLog. It is updated every hour.


News
May 3, 2008 We are migrating to the new server box. All services including web, cvs and change logs update should be up and running by now.
March 24, 2008 The third iteration of our Neuroinformatics submission went out. In the process we packed 0.3.4 release candidate and tested it on SuSE, Fedora Core, KUbuntu, and CentOS. We also tested CVS installation on these systems except KUbuntu. To simplify installation process for the user we dedicated a section of this website to Installation Guide. A few caveats that we found are pinpointed there and easy solutions are suggested.
December 16, 2007 We are resubmitting a paper in Neuroinformatics on KInNeSS. One of the issues reviewers pointed out was a problem building KInNeSS. Since there are all various flavors of Linux around, we cannot test every possible configuration. Here is the list that definitely works: All flavors of SuSE up to 10: I use 10 for development at the moment, 9 and 8 did not have problems in the past as long as KDE was recent. A few Fedora core and RedHat flavors generally work, but I suggest copying of admin directory instead of linking it as user manual suggests. What seems to have definite issues are new Ubuntu flavors. We will appreciate all reports of installation success or failure on various systems.

In the mean while long promised CPPVODE is almost at the production stage. I branched SANNDRA version for it and work on the datatype integration.

August 28, 2007 In the process of our user base expansion we found that there are problems compiling KInNeSS on gcc-4.1.x Ubuntu system. We fixed the code issues, but there is still an issue with automake system incorrectly communicating with KDE build system. I would presume that new Ubuntu uses versions of autoconf and automake that are not yet supported by KDE build system.

In the meanwhile we introduced long awaited branched dendritic structure. It is not fully tested with population cloning, other than that Jasmin tested it enough to call it beta. This change leads to incompatibility between older KInNeSS and newer NeuroML version (1.3). There will be one more change to NeuroML in KInNeSS, I am in the process of changing the approach the synaptic weights are handled. As always, newer KInNeSS does not have problems with old NeuroML (1.2). I removed support for NeuroML we used 3 years ago (1.1).

November 28, 2006 Due to popular demand, I put release candidates for next versions as tarballs in the download section of this site.
June 3, 2006 CVS has a few bugfixes that I did over the year, and I still don't have time to put a release together. In the meanwhile I am working on SANNDRA-2.0.0 providing more modular design and relaxing license requirement for the new core engine to LGPL, so that commercial applications can use it too. Julia Berzhanskaya was granted a feature presentation at Computational Neuroscience Meeting this year for her research done with the help of KInNeSS.
August 25, 2005 I completed the new input protocol editor, now it allows to use almost arbitrary input sequences. I the process I realized that I am more and more dependent on KDE 3.4 functionality. I will probably remove support for earlier versions immediately after the release.
August 8, 2005 The new CVS server is established. The old server will function until September. To convert to a new server put this script into your root sanndra or kinness directory and execute it.
June 9, 2005 First of all I have completed my PhD and started a postdoctoral research, of which KInNeSS is an integral part. That means I will do much more development in the future. Second, I noticed that I did not make a public release for a year, so I will be putting the next version release candidate up shortly. It will contain the current CVS version before I will start to add any drastic changes. It is well tested by both me in the process of my dissertation preparation and by Max. A few remaining issues will be fixed in the near future, while the whole new computational engine will be developed in a separate CVS branch. Finally, Max has put together a video tutorial of first steps in using KInNeSS and KPL, which is available here.
March 6, 2005 CVS is back to full functionality. I've just checked in the serious rewrite of SANNDRA's synapses. There are few API changes, mainly renaming TUnit::addDependency methods, removing TAxonUnit, and adding TTerminalUnit, TDepleteableTUnit, and TSomaLayer. Technically it should be 2.0.0 now, but I am planning to change it more shortly. Documentation section on SANNDRA now contains my personal copy of API, which is not really API because it shows all private parts :)
March 2, 2005 It has been a long break in the news while I was writing up my dissertation. In the process I reworked several old visualization tools and added new including local field potential and current source density displays. The server was upgraded to SuSE 9.2, and CVS will be back up in couple of days. Due to popular demands I am reworking synapses to add depleteable transmitters and connection-specific axonal delays. Not sure how much of SANNDRA API changes will it cause.
September 20, 2004 Apparently, while I was out of the country, the server died. I apologize for the inconvenience. I am back and working on improved learning laws. There are minor issues with 3 addDependency methods of TUnit class for those who uses SANNDRA as standalone library. Two parameters had changed their meanings from 1.0.0 version. The API is the same, so it will compile, run and misbehave if you used them. KInNeSS users should not worry, it is all taken care of.
June 26, 2004 Starting today cvs head contains what will be SANNDRA-1.1.0 and KInNeSS-0.3.3. You can still compile KInNeSS-0.3.2 against SANNDRA-1.1.x, if you change line 57 of configure.in.in from sanndra_ver=1.0 to sanndra_ver=1.1. KInNeSS-0.3.3 requires SANNDRA-1.1.x to compile.

I am in the process of adding numerical integration for stiff systems. The metod will be CVODE (a part of SUNDIALS package, distributed under BSD license, also used in XPP by Bard Ermentrout). It will be fully rewritten in C++ (for license issues: meaning that yes, I looked at the original code dated 1994 for guidance and often tried to name variables similar to the original, but all data structures and their interactions were designed from scratch). I tentatively call it CPPVODE.

June 4, 2004 After a few fixes 0.3.2 is finally out.

KInNeSS-0.3.2: download it or browse the user manual.

SANNDRA-1.0.0: download it or browse the API documentation.

May 29, 2004 OK, that's about all I wanted in 0.3.2 release. I'll give Max and myself couple days to see if there are any bugs in these versions and make a release.

KInNeSS-0.3.2(RC2): download it or browse the user manual.

SANNDRA-1.0.0(RC3): download it or browse the API documentation.

May 25, 2004 Apparently, registration of kinness.net led to immediate attack by some hacker on the server. I apologize for your inconvenience while we bring the system back up.

Thanks to everybody who attended our poster at ICCNS for the feedback. The PDF of the poster is available in the Documentation section. I'm putting together all suggestions and examples for the release later this week.

May 1, 2004 Bad news: the release is behind schedule for a few days. Good news: I am releasing candidates for both SANNDRA and KInNeSS.

KInNeSS-0.3.2(RC1): download it or browse the incomplete version of a user manual.

SANNDRA-1.0.0(RC2): download it or browse the API documentation.

April 24, 2004 SANNDRA-1.0.0(RC1) is released. Download it or browse the API documentation.
March 15, 2004 Release of KInNeSS-0.3.2 and SANNDRA-1.0.0(beta) with full documentation is scheduled on May 1st, 2004