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                                 README
                           -------------------
                             W. Michael Brown

README for building LAMMPS GPU Library

This file is part of the LAMMPS GPU Library

begin                : Thu Jun 25 2009
copyright            : (C) 2009 by W. Michael Brown
email                : wmbrown@sandia.gov

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/* -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright (2009) Sandia Corporation.  Under the terms of Contract
DE-AC04-94AL85000 with Sandia Corporation, the U.S. Government retains
certain rights in this software.  This software is distributed under 
the GNU General Public License.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- */


                       GENERAL NOTES

This library, pair_gpu_lib.a, provides routines for GPGPU acceleration of LAMMPS pair styles. Currently, only CUDA enabled GPUs are supported. Compilation of this library requires installing the CUDA GPU driver and CUDA toolkit for your operating system. In addition to the LAMMPS library, the binary nvc_get_devices will also be built. This can be used to query the names and properties of GPU devices on your system.

Current pair styles supporting GPU Accelartion:

1. lj/cut/gpu
2. gayberne/gpu

MULTIPLE LAMMPS PROCESSES

When using GPGPU acceleration, you are restricted to one physical GPU per LAMMPS process. This can be multiple GPUs on a single node or across multiple nodes. Intructions on GPU assignment can be found in the LAMMPS documentation.

          


SPEEDUPS

The speedups that can be obtained using this library are highly dependent on the GPU architecture and the computational expense of the pair potential. When comparing a single precision Tesla C1060 run to a serial Intel Xeon 5140 2.33 GHz serial run, the speedup is ~4.42x for lj/cut with a cutoff of 2.5. For gayberne with a cutoff of 7, the speedup is >103x for 8000 particles. The speedup will improve with an increase in the number of particles or an increase in the cutoff.

     
BUILDING AND PRECISION MODES

To build, edit the CUDA_CPP, CUDA_ARCH, CUDA_PREC, and CUDA_LINK files for your machine. Type make. Additionally, the GPU package must be installed and compiled for LAMMPS. The library supports 3 precision modes as determined by the CUDA_PREC variable:

CUDA_PREC = -D_SINGLE_SINGLE  # Single precision for all calculations
CUDA_PREC = -D_DOUBLE_DOUBLE  # Double precision for all calculations
CUDA_PREC = -D_SINGLE_DOUBLE  # Accumulation of forces, etc. in double

GPU MEMORY

Upon initialization of the pair style, the library will reserve memory for 64K atoms per GPU or 70% of each cards GPU memory, whichever value is limiting. The value of 70% can be changed by editing the PERCENT_GPU_MEMORY definition in the source file. The value of 64K cannot be increased and is the maximum number of atoms allowed per GPU. Using the 'neigh_modify one' modifier in your LAMMPS input script can help to increase maximum number of atoms per GPU for cards with limited memory.