[gmx-users] very strange domain composition statistics

Jennifer Williams Jennifer.Williams at ed.ac.uk
Thu Jul 30 18:59:13 CEST 2009


Hi ,

I am having some problems when running in parallel. Although my jobs  
run to completion I am getting some worrying domain decomposition  
statistics in particular the average load imbalance and the  
performance loss due to load imbalance see below:

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 1974.8
  av. #atoms communicated per step for LINCS:  2 x 15.2

  Average load imbalance: 500.0 %
  Part of the total run time spent waiting due to load imbalance:  
4246403072.0 %
  Steps where the load balancing was limited by -rdd, -rcon and/or -dds: X 9 %

NOTE: 4246403072.0 % performance was lost due to load imbalance
       in the domain decomposition.

      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.            6       1001 18443320139.164    42130.9   100.0
  Update                 6    1000001 18442922984.491    42130.0   100.0
  Rest                   6            9223372036.855    21069.4    50.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Total                  6            18446422611.669    42138.0   100.0
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: 305 % 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:   7023.000   7023.000    100.0
                        1h57:03
                (Mnbf/s)   (GFlops)   (ns/day)  (hour/ns)
Performance:     14.214      1.902     12.302      1.951
Finished mdrun on node 0 Wed Jul 29 23:47:18 2009



Below is my .mdp file: I am using the PME but not having much of a  
feel for how to set the options under  Spacing for the PME/PPPM FFT  
grid, I left these as the default values. Could this be where the  
trouble lies?

My cut-off cannot be larger than 0.9 as my unit cell is only 18.2A in  
one direction.

How do I choose values for PME/PPPM? Ie what kind of values to use for  
nx, ny and nz ?
I read that they should be divisible by npme to get the best  
performance. Is npme the pme_order in the .mdp file? If not where do I  
set this parameter?

Much appreciated,

Jenny



; VARIOUS PREPROCESSING OPTIONS
; Preprocessor information: use cpp syntax.
; e.g.: -I/home/joe/doe -I/home/mary/hoe
include                  = -I../top
; e.g.: -DI_Want_Cookies -DMe_Too
define                   =

; RUN CONTROL PARAMETERS
integrator               = md
; Start time and timestep in ps
tinit                    = 0
dt                       = 0.001
nsteps                   = 1000000
; For exact run continuation or redoing part of a run
; Part index is updated automatically on checkpointing (keeps files separate)
simulation_part          = 1
init_step                = 0
; mode for center of mass motion removal
comm-mode                = linear
; number of steps for center of mass motion removal
nstcomm                  = 1
; group(s) for center of mass motion removal
comm-grps                =

; LANGEVIN DYNAMICS OPTIONS
; Friction coefficient (amu/ps) and random seed
bd-fric                  = 0
ld-seed                  = 1993

; ENERGY MINIMIZATION OPTIONS
; Force tolerance and initial step-size
emtol                    =
emstep                   =
; Max number of iterations in relax_shells
niter                    =
; Step size (ps^2) for minimization of flexible constraints
fcstep                   =
; Frequency of steepest descents steps when doing CG
nstcgsteep               =
nbfgscorr                =

; TEST PARTICLE INSERTION OPTIONS
rtpi                     =

; OUTPUT CONTROL OPTIONS
; Output frequency for coords (x), velocities (v) and forces (f)
nstxout                  = 1000
nstvout                  = 1000
nstfout                  = 0
; Output frequency for energies to log file and energy file
nstlog                   = 1000
nstenergy                = 1000
; Output frequency and precision for xtc file
nstxtcout                = 1000
xtc-precision            = 1000
; This selects the subset of atoms for the xtc file. You can
; select multiple groups. By default all atoms will be written.
xtc-grps                 =
; Selection of energy groups
energygrps               =

; NEIGHBORSEARCHING PARAMETERS
; nblist update frequency
nstlist                  =
; ns algorithm (simple or grid)
ns_type                  = grid
; Periodic boundary conditions: xyz, no, xy
pbc                      = xyz
periodic_molecules       = yes
; nblist cut-off
rlist                    = 0.9

; OPTIONS FOR ELECTROSTATICS AND VDW
; Method for doing electrostatics
coulombtype              = PME
rcoulomb-switch          = 0
rcoulomb                 = 0.9
; Relative dielectric constant for the medium and the reaction field
epsilon_r                =
epsilon_rf               =

; Method for doing Van der Waals
vdw-type                 = Cut-off
; cut-off lengths
rvdw-switch              = 0
rvdw                     = 0.9
; Apply long range dispersion corrections for Energy and Pressure
DispCorr                 = No
; Extension of the potential lookup tables beyond the cut-off
table-extension          =
; Seperate tables between energy group pairs
energygrp_table          =


; Spacing for the PME/PPPM FFT grid
fourierspacing           = 0.12
; FFT grid size, when a value is 0 fourierspacing will be used
fourier_nx               = 0
fourier_ny               = 0
fourier_nz               = 0
; EWALD/PME/PPPM parameters
pme_order                =
ewald_rtol               = 1e-05
ewald_geometry           = 3d
epsilon_surface          = 0
optimize_fft             = yes



; OPTIONS FOR WEAK COUPLING ALGORITHMS
; Temperature coupling
tcoupl                   = nose-hoover
; Groups to couple separately
tc-grps                  = System
; Time constant (ps) and reference temperature (K)
tau_t                    = 0.1
ref_t                    = 150

; Pressure coupling
Pcoupl                   = No
Pcoupltype               =
; Time constant (ps), compressibility (1/bar) and reference P (bar)
tau-p                    =
compressibility          =
ref-p                    =
; Scaling of reference coordinates, No, All or COM
refcoord_scaling         = no
; Random seed for Andersen thermostat
andersen_seed            =

; GENERATE VELOCITIES FOR STARTUP RUN
gen_vel                  = yes
gen_temp                 = 150
gen_seed                 = 173529

; OPTIONS FOR BONDS
constraints              = none
; Type of constraint algorithm
constraint-algorithm     = Lincs
; Do not constrain the start configuration
continuation             = no
; Use successive overrelaxation to reduce the number of shake iterations
Shake-SOR                = no
; Relative tolerance of shake
shake-tol                = 0.0001
; Highest order in the expansion of the constraint coupling matrix
lincs-order              = 4
; Number of iterations in the final step of LINCS. 1 is fine for
; normal simulations, but use 2 to conserve energy in NVE runs.
; For energy minimization with constraints it should be 4 to 8.
lincs-iter               = 1
; Lincs will write a warning to the stderr if in one step a bond
; rotates over more degrees than
lincs-warnangle          = 30
; Convert harmonic bonds to morse potentials
morse                    = no

; ENERGY GROUP EXCLUSIONS
; Pairs of energy groups for which all non-bonded interactions are excluded
energygrp_excl           =

; WALLS
; Number of walls, type, atom types, densities and box-z scale factor  
for Ewald
nwall                    = 0
wall_type                = 9-3
wall_r_linpot            = -1
wall_atomtype            =
wall_density             =
wall_ewald_zfac          = 3


; Non-equilibrium MD stuff
acc-grps                 =
accelerate               =
freezegrps               = SI_O
freezedim                = Y Y Y
cos-acceleration         = 0
deform                   =





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