gmx nonbonded-benchmark¶
Synopsis¶
gmx nonbonded-benchmark [-size <int>] [-nt <int>] [-simd <enum>] [-coulomb <enum>] [-[no]table] [-combrule <enum>] [-[no]halflj] [-[no]energy] [-[no]all] [-cutoff <real>] [-iter <int>] [-warmup <int>] [-[no]cycles]
Description¶
gmx nonbonded-benchmark
runs benchmarks for one or more so-called Nbnxm
non-bonded pair kernels. The non-bonded pair kernels are
the most compute intensive part of MD simulations
and usually comprise 60 to 90 percent of the runtime.
For this reason they are highly optimized and several different
setups are available to compute the same physical interactions.
In addition, there are different physical treatments of Coulomb
interactions and optimizations for atoms without Lennard-Jones
interactions. There are also different physical treatments of
Lennard-Jones interactions, but only a plain cut-off is supported
in this tool, as that is by far the most common treatment.
And finally, while force output is always necessary, energy output
is only required at certain steps. In total there are
12 relevant combinations of options. The combinations double to 24
when two different SIMD setups are supported. These combinations
can be run with a single invocation using the -all
option.
The behavior of each kernel is affected by caching behavior,
which is determined by the hardware used together with the system size
and the cut-off radius. The larger the number of atoms per thread,
the more L1 cache is needed to avoid L1 cache misses.
The cut-off radius mainly affects the data reuse: a larger cut-off
results in more data reuse and makes the kernel less sensitive to cache
misses.
OpenMP parallelization is used to utilize multiple hardware threads
within a compute node. In these benchmarks there is no interaction
between threads, apart from starting and closing a single OpenMP
parallel region per iteration. Additionally, threads interact
through sharing and evicting data from shared caches.
The number of threads to use is set with the -nt
option.
Thread affinity is important, especially with SMT and shared
caches. Affinities can be set through the OpenMP library using
the GOMP_CPU_AFFINITY environment variable.
The benchmark tool times one or more kernels by running them
repeatedly for a number of iterations set by the -iter
option. An initial kernel call is done to avoid additional initial
cache misses. Times are recording in cycles read from efficient,
high accuracy counters in the CPU. Note that these often do not
correspond to actual clock cycles. For each kernel, the tool
reports the total number of cycles, cycles per iteration,
and (total and useful) pair interactions per cycle.
Because a cluster pair list is used instead of an atom pair list,
interactions are also computed for some atom pairs that are beyond
the cut-off distance. These pairs are not useful (except for
additional buffering, but that is not of interest here),
only a side effect of the cluster-pair setup. The SIMD 2xMM kernel
has a higher useful pair ratio then the 4xM kernel due to a smaller
cluster size, but a lower total pair throughput.
It is best to run this, or for that matter any, benchmark
with locked CPU clocks, as thermal throttling can significantly
affect performance. If that is not an option, the -warmup
option can be used to run initial, untimed iterations to warm up
the processor.
The most relevant regime is between 0.1 to 1 millisecond per iteration. Thus it is useful to run with system sizes that cover both ends of this regime.
The -simd
and -table
options select different
implementations to compute the same physics. The choice of these
options should ideally be optimized for the target hardware.
Historically, we only found tabulated Ewald correction to be useful
on 2-wide SIMD or 4-wide SIMD without FMA support. As all modern
architectures are wider and support FMA, we do not use tables by
default. The only exceptions are kernels without SIMD, which only
support tables.
Options -coulomb
, -combrule
and -halflj
depend on the force field and composition of the simulated system.
The optimization of computing Lennard-Jones interactions for only
half of the atoms in a cluster is useful for water, which does not
use Lennard-Jones on hydrogen atoms in most water models.
In the MD engine, any clusters where at most half of the atoms
have LJ interactions will automatically use this kernel.
And finally, the -energy
option selects the computation
of energies, which are usually only needed infrequently.
Options¶
Other options:
-size
<int> (1)- The system size is 3000 atoms times this value
-nt
<int> (1)- The number of OpenMP threads to use
-simd
<enum> (auto)- SIMD type, auto runs all supported SIMD setups or no SIMD when SIMD is not supported: auto, no, 4xm, 2xmm
-coulomb
<enum> (ewald)- The functional form for the Coulomb interactions: ewald, reaction-field
-[no]table
(no)- Use lookup table for Ewald correction instead of analytical
-combrule
<enum> (geometric)- The LJ combination rule: geometric, lb, none
-[no]halflj
(no)- Use optimization for LJ on half of the atoms
-[no]energy
(no)- Compute energies in addition to forces
-[no]all
(no)- Run all 12 combinations of options for coulomb, halflj, combrule
-cutoff
<real> (1)- Pair-list and interaction cut-off distance
-iter
<int> (100)- The number of iterations for each kernel
-warmup
<int> (0)- The number of iterations for initial warmup
-[no]cycles
(no)- Report cycles/pair instead of pairs/cycle