ATK 2008.10 runs on most Windows and Linux systems, on Intel/AMD PCs (i686 and x86_64 architectures). There are however some specific requirements to keep in mind.

• Hardware
• Software (Linux | Windows) 

If ATK fails to run on your system, it is quite likely that a similar problem has already been reported - and solved. The solution can then be found on the Forum. If not, post your problem there, with as many details as you possible can, including the exact software version (and distribution for Linux) and any error messages that appear.

Hardware requirements

CPU

ATK runs on the following platforms:

• i686: Processors conforming to the IA32 architecture, and which support the MMX and SSE instruction sets. This includes both 32 and 64-bit processors such as
  • Intel: Pentium III, Pentium 4, Pentium M, Pentium D, Celeron M, Xeon, Pentium 4 EM64T, Xeon EM64T, Core Solo/Duo, Core 2 Solo/Duo/Quad/Extreme, etc.
  • AMD: Athlon XP, Athlon MP, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Opteron, Duron, Sempron, Turion, etc.
• x86_64: 64-bit processors, belonging either to the EM64T or AMD64 classes, such as
  • Intel: Pentium 4 EM64T, Xeon EM64T, Pentium D, Core 2 Solo/Due/Quad/Extreme
  • AMD: Opteron, Athlon 64, Turion 64

Notes:

• The binary for i686 also runs on 64-bit processors in 32-bit mode, providing that the OS is properly configured. There is however a noticeable performance loss when running 32-bit applications on 64-bit machines compared to using a native 64-bit application.
• SSE2 and SSE3 instruction sets are not in use in ATK.
• AMD Athlon, Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium II and other older processors not supporting the MMX and SSE instruction sets are not supported.

Memory

The memory required to run a calculation in ATK depends strongly on the parameters and the size of the system treated; to run the tutorial examples distributed with ATK, a minimum of 1 GB physical memory is required.

A system with 4 GB should be able to run most calculations with approximately 500 atoms; however, note that some parameter choices can cause such calculations to require substantially more memory.

Hard drive space

To install ATK, approximately 250 MB of free space is required.

When running calculations in ATK, temporary files are created and the calculated results require space. A recommended size for storage is at least 1 GB of free space.

Linux software requirements

Distribution support

ATK has been extensively tested and is officially supported on

• Novell Linux Desktop 9 SP3 x86
• Novell Linux Desktop 9 SP3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 2 x86
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 2 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86_64
• CentOS 4.0 x86_64
• CentOS 5.1 x86_64
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP1 x86
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP1 x86_64

However, ATK typically runs on other distributions as well without problems.

Details

Running ATK on Linux generally requires:

• Linux kernel
  • 2.4.x with NPTL patch or
  • 2.6.x with standard features,
• ELF executable support, TCP/IP networking, etc
• The threading library NPTL (instead of LinuxThread)
• GLIBC 2.3.x

In addition, to run ATK in parallel requires the MPICH2 library, which can be obtained from the MPICH2 website. For more details on running ATK in parallel, see the manual.

ATK links dynamically to a set of libraries, a list can be obtained by navigating to the ATK installation directory, and using these commands:

If a library needed by ATK is missing, it will show up in the output from these commands with the string "not found" appended to the name of the library.

Complete list of libraries ATK links dynamically to:

• ld-linux.so.2 (i686 version of ATK)
• ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (x86_64 version of ATK)
• libc.so.6
• libdl.so.2
• libm.so.6
• libpthread.so.0
• libutil.so.1
• linux-vdso.so.1 (x86_64 version of ATK)
• linux-gate.so.1 (i686 version of ATK)
• libz.so.1 (required by the zipimport module; included in the ATK package)
• libiomp5.so (included in the ATK package)
• libbz2.so.1 (only used if the bz2 modules are imported in the NanoLanguage input scripts)

If any of these libraries are missing, ATK will fail to start, and the corresponding library or RPM package must be installed. Instructions for some specific cases can be found on the Forum board "Installation Questions", where you can also post problems (and solutions!) for your platform.

Windows software requirements

For Windows, ATK has primarily been tested on Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 and SP3. It is however expected to run properly also on Windows 2000/2003, x64 edition and Vista.

Running ATK requires that TCP/IP network is installed. Usually, this means that one has at least one Ethernet NIC which binds with the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)".

It is not possible to run a terminal-based ATK session on a remote network connection.