nnp-checkf

This tool is useful for debugging as it computes numeric forces via the symmetric difference quotient (central difference) and compares it to the analytic forces obtained directly from n2p2’s prediction. Parallelization via MPI is supported and it can process multiple configurations in the input file.

Requirements:

The HDNNP setup, symmetry function scaling data and weight parameters are required in the usual files. The data file input.data may contain multiple configurations.

  • input.data

  • input.nn

  • scaling.data

  • weights.???.data

Usage:

mpirun -np <np> nnp-checkf <<delta>>

where

<np> ........ Number of MPI processes to use.
<<delta>> ... (optional) Displacement for central difference (default: 1.0e-4).

The <<delta>> parameter determines the position displacement of atoms used for the central difference approximation of the forces. If no value is provided the default is \(\delta = 10^{-4}\).

Sample screen output:

*** ANALYTIC/NUMERIC FORCES CHECK *********************************************

Delta for symmetric difference quotient:   1.000E-04
Individual analytic/numeric forces will be written to "checkf-forces.out"
Per-structure summary of analytic/numeric force comparison will be
written to "checkf-summary.out"
Found 3 configurations in data file: input.data.
Starting loop over 3 configurations...

                       numForces meanAbsError  maxAbsError  verdict
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration      1:        144    7.168E-10    2.984E-09  OK.
Configuration      2:        144    8.215E-10    3.212E-09  OK.
Configuration      3:        144    7.254E-10    2.459E-09  OK.
*******************************************************************************

File output:

  • checkf-forces.out: Comparison of analytic/numeric values, each force one line.

  • checkf-summary.out: Per-structure accumulated comparison (same as screen output).

Examples:

  • Run on 4 cores and override default \(\delta\) value:

    mpirun -np 4 nnp-checkf 1.0E-3