TeraChem

TeraChem
Developer(s)PetaChem
Initial releaseMay 2010; 14 years ago (2010-05)
Stable release
1.93P / August 16, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-08-16)
Written inC, CUDA
Operating systemLinux
Platformx86-64, Nvidia GPUs
TypeMolecular modelling
LicenseProprietary commercial software
Websitepetachem.com

TeraChem is a computational chemistry software program designed for CUDA-enabled Nvidia GPUs. The initial development started at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was subsequently commercialized. It is currently distributed by PetaChem, LLC, located in Silicon Valley.[1] As of 2020, the software package is still under active development.

Core features

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TeraChem is capable of fast ab initio molecular dynamics and can utilize density functional theory (DFT) methods for nanoscale biomolecular systems with hundreds of atoms.[2] All the methods used are based on Gaussian orbitals, in order to improve performance on contemporary (2010s) computer hardware.[3]

Press coverage

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  • Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) magazine of the American Chemical Society first mentioned the development of TeraChem in Fall 2008.[4]
  • Recently[ambiguous], C&EN magazine has a feature article covering molecular modeling on GPU and TeraChem.[5]
  • According to the 2010 post at the Nvidia blog, TeraChem has been tested to deliver 8-50 times better performance than General Atomic and Molecular Structure System (GAMESS). In that benchmark, TeraChem was executed on a desktop machine with four (4) Tesla GPUs and GAMESS was running on a cluster of 256 quad core CPUs.[6]
  • TeraChem is available for free via GPU Test Drive.

Major release history

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2017

  • TeraChem version 1.93P
Support for Maxwell and Pascal GPUs (e.g. Titan X-Pascal, P100)
Use of multiple basis sets for different elements $multibasis
Use of polarizable continuum methods for ground and excited states

2016

  • TeraChem version 1.9
Support for Maxwell cards (e.g., GTX 980, Titan X)
Effective core potentials (and gradients)
Time-dependent density functional theory
Continuum solvation models (COSMO)

2012

  • TeraChem version 1.5
Full support of polarization functions: energy, gradients, ab initio dynamics and range-corrected DFT functionals (CAMB3LYP, wPBE, wB97x)

2011

  • TeraChem version 1.5a (pre-release)
Alpha version with the full support of d-functions: energy, gradients, ab initio dynamics
  • TeraChem version 1.43b-1.45b
Beta version with polarization functions for energy calculation (HF/DFT levels) as well as other improvements.
  • TeraChem version 1.42
This version was first deployed at National Center for Supercomputing Applications' (NCSA) Lincoln supercomputer for National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid users as announced in NCSA press release.

2010

  • TeraChem version 1.0
  • TeraChem version 1.0b
The very first initial beta release was reportedly downloaded more than 4,000 times.

Publication list

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Home". petachem.com.
  2. ^ "PetaChem". www.petachem.com.
  3. ^ "TeraChem Userguide 1.41 | PDF | Molecular Orbital | Density Functional Theory". Scribd.
  4. ^ "Unknown".[permanent dead link]
  5. ^ "Unknown".[permanent dead link]
  6. ^ "The world is parallel".