[gmx-users] Gromacs 4 cannot reach Fmax in energy minimisation when version 3 did

Cara Kreck cara_a_k at hotmail.com
Wed Jan 19 04:48:18 CET 2011





Hi everyone,

I have been trying to reproduce a simulation that I previously ran successfully with gromacs 3.3.3 in gromacs 4.0.7 and 4.5.1. It is of a tip4p water box generated with Packmol (and no I can't use the already provided tip4p water box). However I can't even make it past the energy minimisation step. I have noticed that all simulations run into trouble at step 12 and 3.3.3 manages to recover, whereas 4.0.7 and 4.5.1 get stuck. The results of 4.0.7 and 4.5.1 are identical.

Here's an extract from the 4.0.7/4.5.1 log file:

           Step           Time         Lambda
             11       11.00000        0.00000

   Energies (kJ/mol)
        LJ (SR)   Coulomb (SR)   Coul. recip.      Potential Pressure (bar)
    8.12398e+03   -4.64002e+03   -8.80558e+02    2.60340e+03   -4.27109e+03

          Step           Time         Lambda
             12       12.00000        0.00000

   Energies (kJ/mol)
        LJ (SR)   Coulomb (SR)   Coul. recip.      Potential Pressure (bar)
    5.67868e+03   -7.67528e+03   -1.19351e+03   -3.19011e+03   -5.97596e+04

           Step           Time         Lambda
             13       13.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             14       14.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             15       15.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             16       16.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             17       17.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             18       18.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             19       19.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             20       20.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             21       21.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             22       22.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             23       23.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             24       24.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             25       25.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             26       26.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             27       27.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             28       28.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             29       29.00000        0.00000


Stepsize too small, or no change in energy.
Converged to machine precision,
but not to the requested precision Fmax < 100

Double precision normally gives you higher accuracy.
You might need to increase your constraint accuracy, or turn
off constraints alltogether (set constraints = none in mdp file)

Steepest Descents converged to machine precision in 30 steps,
but did not reach the requested Fmax < 100.
Potential Energy  = -3.1901118e+03
Maximum force     =  6.9292950e+05 on atom 97
Norm of force     =  2.1575133e+04


And from the 3.3.3 log file:

           Step           Time         Lambda
             11       11.00000        0.00000

   Energies (kJ/mol)
        LJ (SR)   Coulomb (SR)   Coul. recip.      Potential    Kinetic En.
    8.28949e+03   -4.56483e+03   -8.69953e+02    2.85470e+03    0.00000e+00
   Total Energy    Temperature Pressure (bar)
    2.85470e+03    0.00000e+00    0.00000e+00


t = 0.012 ps: Water molecule starting at atom 97 can not be settled.
Check for bad contacts and/or reduce the timestep.Wrote pdb files with previous and current coordinates
           Step           Time         Lambda
             12       12.00000        0.00000

           Step           Time         Lambda
             13       13.00000        0.00000

   Energies (kJ/mol)
        LJ (SR)   Coulomb (SR)   Coul. recip.      Potential    Kinetic En.
    6.60039e+03   -6.11407e+03   -1.08723e+03   -6.00910e+02    0.00000e+00
   Total Energy    Temperature Pressure (bar)
   -6.00910e+02    0.00000e+00    0.00000e+00

...

(continued on with a few more similar warnings but eventually settled)

...

Steepest Descents converged to Fmax < 100 in 233 steps
Potential Energy  = -2.3777645e+04
Maximum force     =  9.8486107e+01 on atom 1393
Norm of force     =  5.2092145e+02


And here's the input parameters:

cpp                  = /usr/bin/cpp
define               =  
constraints          = all-angles
unconstrained_start  = no
constraint_algorithm = shake
shake_tol            = 0.0001
morse                = no
integrator           = steep
nsteps               = 1000
; Energy minimizing 
emtol                = 100
emstep               = 0.01  
nstcomm              = 1
nstlist              = 10
ns_type              = grid
pbc                  = xyz
rlist                = 0.9
coulombtype          = pme
rcoulomb             = 0.9
vdw-type             = cut-off
rvdw                 = 0.9
nstenergy            = 10
Tcoupl               = no
Pcoupl               = no
gen_vel              = no


I then tried running the same parameters using the spc water box in the tutorial and got these results:

4.0.5/4.7.1

Steepest Descents converged to Fmax < 100 in 63 steps
Potential Energy  = -1.0896633e+04
Maximum force     =  9.1075676e+01 on atom 202
Norm of force     =  1.3547868e+01

3.3.3



Steepest Descents converged to Fmax < 100 in 32 steps

Potential Energy  = -1.0760295e+04

Maximum force     =  8.2715759e+01 on atom 425

Norm of force     =  5.6500586e+02

 
It also gave the same result for version 4 if I ran 4 with the .tpr file I had prepared using 3.

I am running these remotely and I didn't know whether single or double precision versions were installed. The .trr file from 3.3.3 was twice the size of the others (even with half the steps), but gmxdump told me that all versions were single precision.

Are the differences simply due changes between the versions? Looking at the release notes, most changes (particularly between 3.3.3 and 4.0.7) were related to parallelisation and I've run everything on a single cpu. Or is there something else I'm missing? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Cara
 		 	   		  
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