Dear Hungie
you can do one of two things. either explicitly enter the value
ew_coeff = ...  in ewald namelist, or just do as cheatham suggests and 
lower the value of dsum_tol in the same namelist. The value determined by 
dsum_tol and cutoff is spit out in the mdout file
something like:
     Ewald Coefficient =  0.34864
In this case I might suggest increasing by ~0.5. If you enter a value for 
ew_coeff sander won't calculate it from dsum_tol and cutoff. If you don't 
enter it sander will calculate.
probably better to follow cheatham's advice and simply set dsum_tol to 
0.000001
Good luck
Tom D
 On Fri, 9 May 2003, A. 
Hungie wrote:
> Dear Prof. Tom Darden and amber users,
> 
> Thank you very much for your response. However, I am still  confused. I also 
> have no idea what value of ewald coefficient (ew_coeff ) should be used or 
> increased. By default, ew_coeff is determine by dsum_tol and cutoff. So how 
> to calculate ew_coeff? In my case, if dsum_tol = 0.00001 and cutoff = 8.0 
> Angstrom, what is the value of ew_coeff? If I know ew_coeff in this case, I 
> may know how large of ew_coeff should be explicitly entered in my input file 
> (to get rid of energy drift).
> 
> Thank you again in advance.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Hungie
> 
> 
> 
> >For comparison I have run a water box of 216 molecules for 5ns NVE with
> >either a 2fs or 1fs time step with standard default. I got a drift of
> >~2kcals per mole out of ~1750 kcals with a 2fs time step and ~1/2 kcal per
> >mole with a 1fs time step. This latter number is comparable to yours
> >relative to total energy. Also note that the energy conservation behaved
> >quadratically with respect to timestep. This does not happen when
> >you have a serious energy drift problem. However if you're unhappy with
> >your results....
> >Tom Cheatham (he can agree/disagree) had a similar problem and found that
> >by increasing the default ewald coefficient a bit he got rid of the
> >drift. It might be that for highly charged systems the discontinuity in
> >direct sum energy/forces at the cutoff [i.e. erfc(beta*r_cutoff)/r_cutoff
> >is too large] could cause heating. By increasing beta (ewald coefficient)
> >this problem is alleviated. I don't recall how much Tom C increased beta.
> >To be correct [i.e. keep a low error vs exact ewald] you then need to
> >increase reciprocal sum parameters slightly. However since the
> >reciprocal pme sum is smooth (no discontinuities) it doesn't seem to me
> >that the reciprocal sum can cause heating. That is your problem is
> >probably due to direct sum discontinuities and can be helped by increasing
> >beta.
> >
> >Hope this help
> >Tom Darden
> >
> >  On Fri, 9 May 2003, A. Hungie wrote:
> >
> > > Dear All,
> > >
> > > I have run MD simulation of 14 basepairs DNA (in water and nuetralized 
> >by
> > > Na+ ions) using protocol as in Amber tutorial. After doing 6 rounds of
> > > minimizations (reducing restrain energy from 25 to 0 kcal/mol.A^2), I 
> >ran MD
> > > in NPT ensemble for 100 ps which I obtained canstant box size. Then I
> > > switched to NVE ensemble for 5.6 ns (800 ps for each run). I found that
> > > total energy is not constant, i.e. it increases about 6 kcal/mol (from
> > > -37828 kacl/mol to -37822 kcal/mol) within 5.6 ns. I used Amber 6 on 
> >Linux
> > > cluster and input file as below.
> > >
> > > Is the obtained total energy normal and acceptable? Is it equilibrium?
> > >
> > > #my input file.
> > > ------------------------------------------
> > > &cntrl
> > >   ntx    = 7,       irest  = 1,       nmropt = 0,
> > >   imin   = 0,
> > >   maxcyc = 1000,    ncyc   = 5000,
> > >   ntmin  = 1,       dx0    = 0.1,     dxm    = 0.5,    drms   = 0.0001,
> > >
> > >   nstlim = 800000,
> > >   dt     = 0.001,   ndfmin = 0,       t      = 0.0,
> > >   timlim = 999999., ntcm   = 1,       nscm   = 2500,
> > >
> > >   ntpr   = 1000,    ntwr   = 1000,
> > >   ntwx   = 1000,    ntwv   = 0,       ntwe   = 0,
> > >   ntwprt = 0,       ioutfm = 0,       ntrx   = 1,      ntxo   = 1,
> > >
> > >   cut    = 8.0,     dielc  = 1.0,     nsnb   = 10,
> > >   scnb   = 2.0,     scee   = 1.2,     iwrap  = 0,
> > >
> > >   ntb    = 1,       ntp    = 0,       npscal = 1,
> > >   pres0  = 1.0,     comp   = 44.6,    taup   = 2.0,
> > >
> > >   ntc    = 2,       tol    = 0.000001,
> > >   ntf    = 2,
> > >
> > >   ibelly = 0,       ntr    = 0,
> > >
> > >   temp0  = 300.0,   tempi  = 300.0,
> > >   ig     = 71277,   heat   = 0.0,     tautp  = 4.0,
> > >   ntt    = 0,       vlimit = 20.0,    dtemp  = 1.0,
> > > &end
> > >
> > > &ewald
> > >   a      = 42.0151161,  b     = 43.0746222,  c     = 69.8275997,
> > >   alpha  = 90.000,      beta  = 90.000,      gamma = 90.000,
> > >   nfft1  = 45,          nfft2 = 45,          nfft3 = 72,
> > >   order  = 4,           dsum_tol = 0.00001,  eedmeth = 1,
> > >   opt_infl = 1,         vdwmeth  = 1,        use_pme = 1,
> > >   frc_int  = 0,         nbflag   = 1,        skinnb  = 1.0
> > > &end
> > > -----------------------------------
> > >
> > > Thank you very much in advance.
> > >
> > > Hungie
> 
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Received on Sat May 10 2003 - 00:53:01 PDT