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gedymin comments on LINK: Nematode brain uploaded with success - Less Wrong Discussion
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I don't know about the power needed to simulate the neurons, but my guess is that most of the resources are spent not on the calculations, but on interprocess communication. Running 302 processes on a Raspberry Pi and keeping hundreds of UDP sockets open probably takes a lot of its resources.
The technical solution is neither innovative nor fast. The benefits are in its distributed nature (every neuron could be simulated on a different computer) and in simplicity of implementation. At least while 100% faithfullness to the underlying mathematical model is not required. I have no idea how the author plans to avoid unintended data loss in the not-unusual case when some UDP packets are dropped. Retransmission (TCP) is not really an option either, as the system has to run in real time.
If each simulated "neuron" is just a linear threshold unit, as described by the paper, using a whole process to run it and exchange messages by UDP looks like a terribly wasteful architecture.
Maybe the author wants to eventually implement a computationally expensive biologically accurate neuron model, but still I don't see the point of this architecture, as even if the individual neurons were biologically accurate, the overall simulation wouldn't, due to the non-deterministc delays and packet lossess introduced by UDP messaging.
I'm unimpressed.