Accelerating Molecular Dynamics Simulations using Fast Ewald Summation with Prolates

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liang, Jiuyang, Lu, Libin, Barnett, Alex, Greengard, Leslie, Jiang, Shidong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liang, Jiuyang
Lu, Libin
Barnett, Alex
Greengard, Leslie
Jiang, Shidong
author_facet Liang, Jiuyang
Lu, Libin
Barnett, Alex
Greengard, Leslie
Jiang, Shidong
contents The evaluation of long-range Coulomb interactions is a significant cost in molecular dynamics (MD), even when using Particle Mesh Ewald (PME) or Particle-Particle-Particle-Mesh (PPPM) methods, which rely on Ewald splitting and the fast Fourier transform to achieve near-linear scaling. We introduce ESP -- Ewald summation with prolate spheroidal wave functions (PSWFs) -- which leads to a more efficient Fourier representation and a reduction in the required grid size, global communication, and particle-grid operations, without loss of accuracy. We have integrated the ESP method into two widely-used open-source MD packages, LAMMPS and GROMACS, enabling rapid comparison and adoption. Relative to PME/PPPM baselines at error tolerances $10^{-3}$ to $10^{-4}$, ESP gives roughly a $3$-fold acceleration of electrostatic interactions, and a $2.5$-fold speed-up in the MD simulation when using about $10^3$ compute cores. At high accuracy ($10^{-5}$), these increase to $10$-fold for the far-field electrostatics and $5$-fold for MD simulation. Furthermore, we show that the accelerated codes have improved strong scaling with core count, and validate them in realistic long-time biological and material simulations. ESP thus offers a practical, drop-in path to reduce the time-to-solution and energy footprint of MD workflows.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_09727
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Accelerating Molecular Dynamics Simulations using Fast Ewald Summation with Prolates
Liang, Jiuyang
Lu, Libin
Barnett, Alex
Greengard, Leslie
Jiang, Shidong
Numerical Analysis
Biological Physics
The evaluation of long-range Coulomb interactions is a significant cost in molecular dynamics (MD), even when using Particle Mesh Ewald (PME) or Particle-Particle-Particle-Mesh (PPPM) methods, which rely on Ewald splitting and the fast Fourier transform to achieve near-linear scaling. We introduce ESP -- Ewald summation with prolate spheroidal wave functions (PSWFs) -- which leads to a more efficient Fourier representation and a reduction in the required grid size, global communication, and particle-grid operations, without loss of accuracy. We have integrated the ESP method into two widely-used open-source MD packages, LAMMPS and GROMACS, enabling rapid comparison and adoption. Relative to PME/PPPM baselines at error tolerances $10^{-3}$ to $10^{-4}$, ESP gives roughly a $3$-fold acceleration of electrostatic interactions, and a $2.5$-fold speed-up in the MD simulation when using about $10^3$ compute cores. At high accuracy ($10^{-5}$), these increase to $10$-fold for the far-field electrostatics and $5$-fold for MD simulation. Furthermore, we show that the accelerated codes have improved strong scaling with core count, and validate them in realistic long-time biological and material simulations. ESP thus offers a practical, drop-in path to reduce the time-to-solution and energy footprint of MD workflows.
title Accelerating Molecular Dynamics Simulations using Fast Ewald Summation with Prolates
topic Numerical Analysis
Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09727