From ddd7896a3c5f1d1e0be497d41d8f7ba1dae20882 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ben Cumming <bcumming@cscs.ch>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2020 17:57:01 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Update docs cell description vs. cell kind justification
(#1237)
Fixes #1236
---
doc/concepts/recipe.rst | 19 +++++++++----------
1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
diff --git a/doc/concepts/recipe.rst b/doc/concepts/recipe.rst
index a3c09124..7548c924 100644
--- a/doc/concepts/recipe.rst
+++ b/doc/concepts/recipe.rst
@@ -113,16 +113,15 @@ The steps of building a simulation from a recipe are:
.. Note::
An example of how performance considerations impact Arbor's architecture:
you will notice cell kind and cell description are separately added to a recipe.
- Consider the following conversation between an Arbor simulation, recipe and hardware back-end:
-
- | Simulator: give me cell 37.
- | Recipe: here you go, it's of C++ type s3cr1ts4uc3.
- | Simulator: wot? What is the cell kind for cell 37?
- | Recipe: it's a foobar.
- | Simulator: Okay.
- | Cell group implementations: which one of you lot deals with foobars?
- | Foobar_GPUFTW_lolz: That'd be me, if we've got GPU enabled.
- | Simulator: Okay it's up to you then to deal with this s3cr1ts4uc3 object.
+
+ It might seem like overkill to have a separate call that returns the cell
+ kind, when one could determine the kind by requesting the cell description,
+ then querying the kind of the result.
+
+ Some phases of model construction, however, only require the cell kind, and
+ not the full cell description, which can be quite expensive to
+ assemble; for example, a Purkinje cell model can have very complex geometry,
+ a rich collection of ion channels, and thousands of synapses.
General best practices
----------------------
--
GitLab