Quick Start Guide for: OpenRBC - A Fast Simulator of Red Blood Cells at Protein-Resolution

Compilation

x86 processor, recent Linux distribution, g++ newer than 5.3.0:

cd <working_copy>/src
make

To override the compiler used

make CXX=path_to_compiler

For IBM Power 8 architecture

make ARCH=power8

For older Linux systems whose glibc do not provide an std::aligned_alloc function.

make AALLOC=1

A summary of arguments to make:

• ARCH=[power8|x86] compilation target architecture
• CXX=[g++|xlC_r|icpc] compiler
• DEBUG=[0|1] whether to turn on 'optimization for debug'
• AALLOC=[0|1] fall-back option for older linux kernels that do not provide the std::aligned_alloc function.

Small example

cd <working_copy>
mkdir example-small
cd example-small
ln -s ../src/openrbc
OMP_NUM_THREADS=... ./openrbc -E 100 -t 10

To see a list of command line options:

./openrbc --help

OpenMP thread binding is vital to achieve optimal performance acorss multiple NUMA domains. This can be done by setting the environment variables:

In most cases placing consecutive threads on adjacent core/hardware threads would be optimal, however it is highly recommended that you test and tune thread binding before performing production runs. To figure out your socket/core topology refer to the lstopo, hwloc-ls, hwloc-info commnands from the hwloc package.

Full-size example

cd <working_copy>/example-large
ln -s ../src/openrbc
OMP_NUM_THREADS=... ./openrbc -i trimesh -m rbc -E 100 -t ...

where -i instruct the program to initialize using mesh files specified by the -m argument.

Visualization

The initial structure file can be visualized with VMD using the following TCL command.

topo readlammpsdata cell.data bond

The trajectory can be convert to a LAMMPS trajectory format by

cd <working_copy>/src
make orbc-util
cd <working_copy>/<case_directory>
../orbc-util convert cell.orbc cell.lammpstrj

which can then be appended to the initial structure in VMD by

mol addfile cell.lammpstrj autobonds 0

The LAMMPS trajectory file, however, is text-based and works poorly for whole-cell simulations containing millions of particles. In this case a binary format can be generated and appended in vmd:

../orbc-util convert cell.orbc cell.%06d.namdbin

% adjust iteration bound and increment accordingly
for {set i 0} {$i < 1000000} {set i [expr $i + 100]} {
	mol addfile cell.[format "%06d" $i].namdbin type namdbin
}

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