Development And Application Of Methods For Performing Large Scale Electronic Structure Calculations

Development and Application of Methods for Performing Large Scale Electronic Structure Calculations

High-Performance Computing

Over the past decade high performance computing has demonstrated the ability to model and predict accurately a wide range of physical properties and phenomena. Many of these have had an important impact in contributing to wealth creation and improving the quality of life through the development of new products and processes with greater efficacy, efficiency or reduced harmful side effects, and in contributing to our ability to understand and describe the world around us. Following a survey ofthe U.K.'s urgent need for a supercomputingfacility for aca demic research (see next chapter), a 256-processor T3D system from Cray Research Inc. went into operation at the University of Edinburgh in the summer of 1994. The High Performance Computing Initiative, HPCI, was established in November 1994 to support and ensure the efficient and effective exploitation of the T3D (and future gen erations of HPC systems) by a number of consortia working in the "frontier" areas of computational research. The Cray T3D, now comprising 512 processors and total of 32 CB memory, represented a very significant increase in computing power, allowing simulations to move forward on a number offronts. The three-fold aims of the HPCI may be summarised as follows; (1) to seek and maintain a world class position incomputational scienceand engineering, (2) to support and promote exploitation of HPC in industry, commerce and business, and (3) to support education and training in HPC and its application.

Electronic Structure Calculations on Graphics Processing Units

Electronic Structure Calculations on Graphics Processing Units: From Quantum Chemistry to Condensed Matter Physics provides an overview of computing on graphics processing units (GPUs), a brief introduction to GPU programming, and the latest examples of code developments and applications for the most widely used electronic structure methods. The book covers all commonly used basis sets including localized Gaussian and Slater type basis functions, plane waves, wavelets and real-space grid-based approaches. The chapters expose details on the calculation of two-electron integrals, exchange-correlation quadrature, Fock matrix formation, solution of the self-consistent field equations, calculation of nuclear gradients to obtain forces, and methods to treat excited states within DFT. Other chapters focus on semiempirical and correlated wave function methods including density fitted second order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory and both iterative and perturbative single- and multireference coupled cluster methods. Electronic Structure Calculations on Graphics Processing Units: From Quantum Chemistry to Condensed Matter Physics presents an accessible overview of the field for graduate students and senior researchers of theoretical and computational chemistry, condensed matter physics and materials science, as well as software developers looking for an entry point into the realm of GPU and hybrid GPU/CPU programming for electronic structure calculations.