Thanks mark, I'll respond inline.

Chris Neale wrote:
I have now tested with and without -nosum and it appears that the option
is working (see 51 vs. 501 Number of communications) but that the total
amount of time communicating energies didn't go down by very much. Seems
strange to me. Anybody have any ideas if this is normal?

Seems strange, but perhaps a 45-second test is not sufficiently long to
demonstrate suitable scaling.

Agreed, although I find it a good jumping off point, especially now that we need to optimize -npme. If I use quick tests to narrow down the range of nodes/npme that is going to scale the best then I fine tune it with longer scaling tests.

There's no discussion in the 4.0.5 release
notes of a relevant change to -nosum, but there has been a change:
http://oldwww.gromacs.org/content/view/181/132/.

Thanks, I did see this but don't think that it is related to this issue, which I have now confirmed in both 4.0.4 and 4.0.5.


At the very least, I suggest adding an if statement to mdrun so that it
doesn't output the -nosum usage note if the user did in fact use -nosum
in that run.


Without using -nosum:

   R E A L   C Y C L E   A N D   T I M E   A C C O U N T I N G

Computing:         Nodes     Number     G-Cycles    Seconds     %
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
...
Write traj.          256          2      233.218       93.7     0.5
Update               256        501      777.511      312.5     1.7
Constraints          256       1002     1203.894      483.9     2.7
Comm. energies       256        501     7397.995     2973.9    16.5
Rest                 256                 128.058       51.5     0.3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                384               44897.468    18048.0   100.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: 16 % of the run time was spent communicating energies,
     you might want to use the -nosum option of mdrun


       Parallel run - timing based on wallclock.

              NODE (s)   Real (s)      (%)
      Time:     47.000     47.000    100.0
              (Mnbf/s)   (GFlops)   (ns/day)  (hour/ns)
Performance:  13485.788    712.634      1.842     13.029
Finished mdrun on node 0 Mon Jul 20 12:53:41 2009

#########

And using -nosum:

   R E A L   C Y C L E   A N D   T I M E   A C C O U N T I N G
Computing:         Nodes     Number     G-Cycles    Seconds     %
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
...
Write traj.          256          2      213.521       83.3     0.5
Update               256        501      776.606      303.0     1.8
Constraints          256       1002     1200.285      468.2     2.7
Comm. energies       256         51     6926.667     2702.1    15.6
Rest                 256                 127.503       49.7     0.3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                384               44296.670    17280.0   100.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: 16 % of the run time was spent communicating energies,
     you might want to use the -nosum option of mdrun


       Parallel run - timing based on wallclock.

              NODE (s)   Real (s)      (%)
      Time:     45.000     45.000    100.0
              (Mnbf/s)   (GFlops)   (ns/day)  (hour/ns)
Performance:  14084.547    744.277      1.924     12.475

#########

Thanks,
Chris.

Chris Neale wrote:
Hello,

I have been running simulations on a larger number of processors
recently and am confused about the message regarding -nosum that
occurs at the end of the .log file. In this case, I have included the
-nosum option to mdrun and I still get this warning (gromacs 4.0.4).

My command was:
mpirun -np $(wc -l $PBS_NODEFILE | gawk '{print $1}') -machinefile
$PBS_NODEFILE /scratch/cneale/exe/intel/gromacs-4.0.4/exec/bin/mdrun
-deffnm test -nosum -npme 128

Perhaps assigning the result of this to a variable and printing it
before executing it would help confirm that -nosum really was there.

I am not sure what you mean... the while line as a variable? I'm pretty sure that -nosum is there.


Your mdrun output from your first email was...

#########

To confirm that I am asking mdrun for -nosum, to stderr I get:
...
Option       Type   Value   Description
------------------------------------------------------
-[no]h       bool   no      Print help info and quit
-nice        int    0       Set the nicelevel
-deffnm      string test    Set the default filename for all file options
-[no]xvgr    bool   yes     Add specific codes (legends etc.) in the
output
                           xvg files for the xmgrace program
-[no]pd      bool   no      Use particle decompostion
-dd          vector 0 0 0   Domain decomposition grid, 0 is optimize
-npme        int    128     Number of separate nodes to be used for
PME, -1
                           is guess
-ddorder     enum   interleave  DD node order: interleave, pp_pme or
cartesian
-[no]ddcheck bool   yes     Check for all bonded interactions with DD
-rdd         real   0       The maximum distance for bonded
interactions with
                           DD (nm), 0 is determine from initial
coordinates
-rcon        real   0       Maximum distance for P-LINCS (nm), 0 is
estimate
-dlb         enum   auto    Dynamic load balancing (with DD): auto, no
or yes
-dds         real   0.8     Minimum allowed dlb scaling of the DD cell
size
-[no]sum     bool   no      Sum the energies at every step
-[no]v       bool   no      Be loud and noisy
-[no]compact bool   yes     Write a compact log file
-[no]seppot  bool   no      Write separate V and dVdl terms for each
                           interaction type and node to the log file(s)
-pforce      real   -1      Print all forces larger than this (kJ/mol nm)
-[no]reprod  bool   no      Try to avoid optimizations that affect binary
                           reproducibility
-cpt         real   15      Checkpoint interval (minutes)
-[no]append  bool   no      Append to previous output files when
continuing
                           from checkpoint
-[no]addpart bool   yes     Add the simulation part number to all output
                           files when continuing from checkpoint
-maxh        real   -1      Terminate after 0.99 times this time (hours)
-multi       int    0       Do multiple simulations in parallel
-replex      int    0       Attempt replica exchange every # steps
-reseed      int    -1      Seed for replica exchange, -1 is generate
a seed
-[no]glas    bool   no      Do glass simulation with special long range
                           corrections
-[no]ionize  bool   no      Do a simulation including the effect of an
X-Ray
                           bombardment on your system
...

########

... and this does not demonstrate -nosum. Either you've mismatched, or
the command line has lost the -nosum, or there's a bug.

The sections are not mismatched, but thanks for looking in such detail. Perhaps I misunderstand the -[no]sum line below that I have parsed from the above:

 -[no]sum     bool   no      Sum the energies at every step

The fact that
the number for "Comm. energies" decreases suggests you have done it
correctly, though. Perhaps the contents of this variable are being
incorrectly propagated through the code.

This is what I think is most likely the case. I'll take a look, but my gromacs coding endeavours have not been highly successful in the past.

Thanks again,
Chris.


Mark

And the message at the end of the .log file is:
...
   D O M A I N   D E C O M P O S I T I O N   S T A T I S T I C S

av. #atoms communicated per step for force:  2 x 3376415.3
av. #atoms communicated per step for LINCS:  2 x 192096.6

Average load imbalance: 11.7 %
Part of the total run time spent waiting due to load imbalance: 7.9 %
Steps where the load balancing was limited by -rdd, -rcon and/or -dds:
X 0 % Y 0 % Z 0 %
Average PME mesh/force load: 0.620
Part of the total run time spent waiting due to PP/PME imbalance: 10.0 %

NOTE: 7.9 % performance was lost due to load imbalance
     in the domain decomposition.

NOTE: 10.0 % performance was lost because the PME nodes
     had less work to do than the PP nodes.
     You might want to decrease the number of PME nodes
     or decrease the cut-off and the grid spacing.


    R E A L   C Y C L E   A N D   T I M E   A C C O U N T I N G

Computing:         Nodes     Number     G-Cycles    Seconds     %
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Domain decomp.       256         51      337.551      131.2     0.7
Send X to PME        256        501       59.454       23.1     0.1
Comm. coord.         256        501      289.936      112.7     0.6
Neighbor search      256         51     1250.088      485.9     2.8
Force                256        501    16105.584     6259.9    35.4
Wait + Comm. F       256        501     2441.390      948.9     5.4
PME mesh             128        501     5552.336     2158.1    12.2
Wait + Comm. X/F     128        501     9586.486     3726.1    21.1
Wait + Recv. PME F   256        501      459.752      178.7     1.0
Write traj.          256          2      223.993       87.1     0.5
Update               256        501      777.618      302.2     1.7
Constraints          256       1002     1223.093      475.4     2.7
Comm. energies       256         51     7011.309     2725.1    15.4
Rest                 256                 127.710       49.6     0.3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                384               45446.299    17664.0   100.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: 15 % of the run time was spent communicating energies,
     you might want to use the -nosum option of mdrun


       Parallel run - timing based on wallclock.

              NODE (s)   Real (s)      (%)
      Time:     46.000     46.000    100.0
              (Mnbf/s)   (GFlops)   (ns/day)  (hour/ns)
Performance:  13778.036    728.080      1.882     12.752

########

Thanks,
Chris

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------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:12:31 +0200
From: patrick fuchs <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [gmx-users] problem with 53a6 simulating a coiled-coil
        fiber   like protein
To: Discussion list for GROMACS users <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Well, not coiled coil, but I have observed serious distortions in a
all-helix protein with G53A6 and reaction field. Using PME solved the
problem.

Indeed. rlist = 0.8 and any kind of electostatic cut-off was acceptable
in about the 1980s :-)
Well, this is how the force field was parameterized with the force field
correction in 2004... But I do agree that G53a6 with RF is 'helix
unfriendly', never tried it with PME though.

Patrick


Mark

Marcos

On Mon, 2009-07-20 at 13:50 +0200, Lory Montout wrote:
Dear all

I recently performed MD simulations using 53A6 force field with
Gromacs4.0 The system includes a protein+water and ions for
neutralizing, The protocol is quite classical: NPT ensemble, 300K and
reaction field for electrostatics, 2fs for integration, bond lengths are
constrained.
The protein is a coiled-coil fiber like protein, including different
repeat units. At the
starting point, the protein  roughly adopts a cylinder shape. After
few ns ( less than 5), some helices are broken,  even unfold. Finally,
the protein is kinked,with a kink angle  ~ 90°. I tested different
constructions but observed similar results.
The same system was simulated with NAMD, charmm force field, the
structure remains stable all along the simulation (10ns for now ).
Did anyone obtain similar results for a coiled coil  system with 53A6
force field?

here is my .mdp file :

nstvout             =  10000
nstfout             =  0
nstxtcout           =  2500
xtc_precision       =  1000
nstlog              =  500
nstenergy           =  500
nstlist             =  5
rlist               =  0.8
coulombtype         =  generalized-reaction-field
rcoulomb            =  1.4
rvdw                =  1.4
epsilon_rf          =  62.0
; Temperature coupling is on in two groups
Tcoupl              =  Berendsen
tc-grps             =  Protein  Non-Protein
tau_t               =  0.1      0.1
ref_t               =  300      300
; Energy monitoring
energygrps          =  Protein SOL NA+
; Pressure coupling is not on
Pcoupl              =  Berendsen
tau_p               =  1.0
compressibility     =  4.5e-5
ref_p               =  1.0

Thanks a lot for your
answers._______________________________________________
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--
_______________________________________________________________________
!!!! new E-mail address: [email protected] !!!!
Patrick FUCHS
Dynamique des Structures et Interactions des Macromolécules Biologiques
INTS, INSERM UMR-S665, Université Paris Diderot,
6 rue Alexandre Cabanel, 75015 Paris
Tel : +33 (0)1-44-49-30-57 - Fax : +33 (0)1-47-34-74-31
Web Site: http://www.dsimb.inserm.fr/~fuchs


------------------------------

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