Implementation of EAM and FS potentials in HOOMD-blue

ORAL

Abstract

HOOMD-blue$^{\mathrm{[1]}}$ is a general-purpose software to perform classical molecular dynamics simulations entirely on GPUs. We provide full support for EAM and FS type potentials in HOOMD-blue, and report accuracy and efficiency benchmarks, including comparisons with the LAMMPS$^{\mathrm{[2]}}$ GPU$^{\mathrm{[3]}}$ package. Two problems were selected to test the accuracy: the determination of the glass transition temperature of Cu$_{\mathrm{64.5}}$Zr$_{\mathrm{35.5}}$ alloy using an FS potential and the calculation of pair distribution functions of Ni$_{\mathrm{3}}$Al using an EAM potential. In both cases, the results using HOOMD-blue are indistinguishable from those obtained by the GPU package in LAMMPS within statistical uncertainties. As tests for time efficiency, we benchmark time-steps per second using LAMMPS GPU and HOOMD-blue on one NVIDIA Tesla GPU. Compared to our typical LAMMPS simulations on one CPU cluster node which has 16 CPUs, LAMMPS GPU can be 3-3.5 times faster, and HOOMD-blue can be 4-5.5 times faster. [1] Anderson, J. A., Lorenz, C. D., Travesset, A. J Comp Phys, 227(10), 5342--5359, (2008). [2] S. Plimpton, J Comp Phys, 117, 1-19 (1995). [3] W. M. Brown, P. Wang, S. J. Plimpton, A. N. Tharrington, Comp Phys Comm, 182, 898-911, (2011).

Authors

  • Lin Yang

    Ames Lab, Iowa State University

  • Feng Zhang

    Ames Lab, Ames Laboratory of US Department of Energy

  • Alex Travesset

    Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University, Iowa State University, Ames Lab, Iowa State University and Ames lab, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University and Ames Lab

  • Cai-Zhuang Wang

    Ames Lab and Iowa State University, Ames Laboratory, US DOE, Ames, IA, USA, Ames Lab, Iowa State University, Ames Laboratory–U.S. Department of Energy, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA, Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, Ames Laboratory, US DOE, Ames Laboratory of US Department of Energy

  • Kai-Ming Ho

    Ames Lab and Iowa State University, Ames Lab, Iowa State University, Ames Laboratory of US Department of Energy