Diff-MD

∂-MD (read diff-MD) is built on top of ∂-HyMD. The main goal is to automatically learn force field parameters while running differentiable molecular dynamics simulations. Instead of using the hybrid particle-field Hamiltonian, this version uses regular force field functions.

To read more about ∂-HyMD check the paper here.

Installation

Note: If installing on Saga or Betzy you need to first load the python and openmpi modules

module load Python/3.11.3-GCCcore-12.3.0
module load OpenMPI/4.1.5-GCC-12.3.0

and then proceed with the installation.

Clone the repo on your machine and create a virtual enviroment inside a directory <dir> of your choice

cd Diff-MD
python -m venv --upgrade-deps <dir>

Then you can simply install the package with

source <dir>/bin/activate
pip install .

Example usage

To run a simple MD simulation you can use

cd examples
diff_md mdrun -f dppc/input.h5 -p dppc/topol.toml -c dppc/options.toml -o dppc/simulation -v

Instead, to optimize force field parameters you can run

cd examples
sed -i -e s/10000/200/ dppc/options.toml # Use smaller number of steps when training
diff_md optimize -f input.h5 -p topol.toml -c options.toml -o dppc/train -m dppc/training.toml -v

Optimization

Optimization requires a bit more work, so carefully check dppc/training.toml for all the available options.

Inside training.toml we need to specify a system list. The elements of this list are directories that each contain the inputs to diff_md, with the same name provided in the command line (in the example above, these are input.h5, topol.toml, and options.toml). The system directories paths are relative to the working directory path from which you call diff_md.

It is also possible to run multiple replicas of the optimzation in parallel, by using mpirun

mpirun -n 4 diff_md optimize ...

Finally, the program automatically checkpoints the state of the gradients and the parameters after each epoch. These checkpoints are saved in the step_#/cpt directories. It's possible to restart the optimization from a given checkpoint by simply passing that directory to diff_md:

diff_md optimize ... --restart step_600/cpt