Installation

Installation#

brainevent is a pure-Python package built on JAX. Pick the install that matches your hardware.

pip install -U brainevent[cpu]

# CUDA 12
pip install -U brainevent[cuda12]

# CUDA 13
pip install -U brainevent[cuda13]

pip install -U brainevent[tpu]

To install the whole BrainX ecosystem (brainevent bundled with compatible modeling packages) in one step:

pip install -U BrainX

Verifying the installation#

import brainevent
import jax

print(brainevent.__version__)
print(jax.devices())          # confirm the expected CPU / GPU / TPU backend

GPU compilation dependencies#

The first time a kernel runs on a GPU, brainevent compiles its CUDA source on the fly. This needs three things:

  1. NVIDIA driver (provides libcuda and nvidia-smi) — a system-level requirement for any GPU workload.

  2. ``jax[cuda12]`` or ``jax[cuda13]`` — installing it pulls in the nvidia-* pip packages, which already bundle nvcc/ptxas/the CUDA runtime/headers. A separate system CUDA Toolkit is therefore not required.

  3. A host C++ compiler (``g++``/``clang++``) — pip does not provide one. Install it via conda install -c conda-forge gxx, sudo apt-get install g++, or sudo dnf install gcc-c++.

Note

Pure event-driven array and sparse-matrix operations work out of the box on every backend. The C++ compiler is only needed when you compile custom C++/CUDA kernels (see Compile a raw CUDA/C++ kernel).

Optional toolchain configuration#

For non-standard CUDA setups, these knobs control kernel compilation:

Setting

Effect

brainevent.config.prefer_system_nvcc()

Prefer the system PATH nvcc instead of the pip-bundled one (pip is the default).

BRAINEVENT_NVCC_PREFER=pip|system

Same choice via environment variable.

BRAINEVENT_NVCC_PATH / CUDA_HOME / CXX

Point at a specific nvcc, CUDA install, or host compiler.

BRAINEVENT_ALLOW_UNSUPPORTED_COMPILER=1

Force compilation when the host gcc is newer than nvcc officially supports.

BRAINEVENT_COMPUTE_CAPABILITIES=8.6,8.0

Skip nvidia-smi auto-detection and target these architectures.

BRAINEVENT_TOOLCHAIN_DEBUG=1

Append a “toolchain snapshot” to every toolchain error for easier debugging.

Once installed, head to the Quickstart.