This page is legacy documentation for a previous version of ATK. You are probably much more interested in the later releases that can be found at the download page!

These are the detailed system requirements for Atomistix ToolKit (ATK) 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. Please find below information on:

There were five different distributions of ATK, compatible with the following platforms:

The processor labels are explained in the following section.

The LSB versions refer to the Linux Standard Base list of certified Linux distributions. Note that the C++ module is needed; it is not sufficient with just the core module.

Hardware requirements

CPU

Currently, 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.
• ia64: 64-bit processors conforming to the IA64 architecture, that is
  • Intel Itanium 2
• 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 an noticeable performance loss when running 32-bit applications on Itanium II.
• 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.

Software requirements

ATK runs on almost all Linux and Windows systems, but there are specific requirements that must be met.

Linux

ATK is expected to run properly on any Linux distribution listed in the Linux Distribution Certification Register that matches the LSB version of the specific ATK package as listed above.

Note that

• LSB 1.3 includes
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
• LSB 3.0/3.1 includes
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5
  • SUSE Linux 10.x
  • SUSE LINUX Enterprise 9/SP3 and 10.x

If your platform is not listed, the following information should allow you to determine if ATK will run on your system, and which ATK package to use.

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 is NPTL instead of LinuxThread
• GLIBC 2.3.x

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

   ldd bin/atk
   ldd lib/python2.4/_PyATK.so

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.

Except for libstdc++ (and libgcc_s), all libraries that ATK links dynamically to are probably installed on all modern Linux distributions.

The complete list of libraries used by ATK:

1. The following libraries are part of glibc:
   • ld-linux.so.2
   • libc.so.6
   • libdl.so.2
   • libm.so.6
   • libpthread.so.0
   • libutil.so.1
2. The zlib compression library is required by the zipimport module:
   • libz.so.1
3. The following library is only used if the bz2 modules are imported in the ATK input scripts:
   • libbz2.so.1
4. The following libraries must, as discussed above, also be installed, as part of GCC:
   • libgcc_s.so.1
   • libstdc++.so.5 or libstdc++.so.6

It is really only the last point that makes a difference (for ATK) between LSB versions, with

• libstdc++.so.5 corresponding to LSB 1.3/2.0
• libstdc++.so.6 corresponding to LSB 3.0/3.1

The easiest way to determine which ATK package you should download and install, is to check which version of GCC that is used on your system. Just type "gcc --version" in a terminal window. If GCC is installed, the first line of the output will give you the version, for example:

   gcc (GCC) 3.3.5-20050130

• If you have GCC version 3.3.x, you should download the LSB 1.3/2.0 package
• If your GCC version is 3.4.x, then get the LSB 3.x package

If GCC is not installed, ATK will not be able to run. Contact your system administrator for assistance on how to obtain and install it.

Windows

ATK has been successfully tested on Microsoft Windows XP Professional. 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)".

A parallel version of ATK for Windows has not yet been released. Please contact the sales department at Atomistix for further information, if you are interested in this version.

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