GROMACS: Fast, Flexible, and Free
GROMACS: Fast, Flexible, and Free DAVID VAN DER SPOEL,1 ERIK LINDAHL,2 BERK HESS,3 GERRIT GROENHOF,4 ALAN E. MARK,4 HERMAN J. C. BERENDSEN4 1Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, Husargatan 3, Box 596, S-75124 Uppsala, Sweden 2Stockholm Bioinformatics Center, SCFAB, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden 3Max-Planck Institut fu¨r Polymerforschung, Ackermannweg 10, D-55128 Mainz, Germany 4Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, NL-9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands Received 12 February 2005; Accepted 18 March 2005 DOI 10.1002/jcc.20291 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). Abstract: This article describes the software suite GROMACS (Groningen MAchine for Chemical Simulation) that was developed at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in the early 1990s. The software, written in ANSI C, originates from a parallel hardware project, and is well suited for parallelization on processor clusters. By careful optimization of neighbor searching and of inner loop performance, GROMACS is a very fast program for molecular dynamics simulation. It does not have a force field of its own, but is compatible with GROMOS, OPLS, AMBER, and ENCAD force fields. In addition, it can handle polarizable shell models and flexible constraints. The program is versatile, as force routines can be added by the user, tabulated functions can be specified, and analyses can be easily customized. Nonequilibrium dynamics and free energy determinations are incorporated. Interfaces with popular quantum-chemical packages (MOPAC, GAMES-UK, GAUSSIAN) are provided to perform mixed MM/QM simula- tions. The package includes about 100 utility and analysis programs.
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