Ascalaph DNA GPU
Ascalaph DNA GPU is a hardware-accelerated version of Ascalaph DNA, identical in all features except performance. The program uses an NVIDIA card to speed up the computation of non-valent interactions.
Before purchasing the program, please pay attention to the following
- You must have a video card supporting CUDA 2.0 technology.
- To achieve substantial acceleration, the video card must have at least 12 multiprocessors.
- Such cards consume much energy, so your computer may need a new power supply unit.
- You must install a driver supporting CUDA 2.0 technology.
- No acceleration will be observed for very small models comprising 100-200 atoms, the computation may even slow down. Substantial acceleration is achieved for models consisting of thousands of atoms.
- Currently the program handles medium-sized models, limited by computer configuration. Thus with 2 GB RAM and 300 MB video card memory, you can work with models including about 5000 atoms; these specifications are regarded as minimal.
- The current version is intended for DNA calculations with implicit water. Therefore, periodic boundary conditions are not realized herein.
Benchmark analysis
1 ps dynamics of DNA fragments of varied length
| Atoms | 774 | 1536 | 3214 | 5134 |
| CPU Intel Core2 4300 @ 1.80GHz, sec | 43.9 | 147.1 | 544.4 | 1327. |
| GPU GeForce 8800 GTS (320 MB), sec | 17.5 | 32.8 | 65.7 | 105.6 |
| Acceleration, % | 250 | 450 | 830 | 1260 |