Subject: ANNOUNCE: NAMD 2.0 Release

From: Jim Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 19:02:30 -0600 (EST)

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|                   NAMD 2.0 Release Announcement                    |
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                                                       March 25, 1999

The Theoretical Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois is
proud to announce the public release of a new version of NAMD, a
parallel, object-oriented molecular dynamics code designed for
high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems.  NAMD is
distributed free of charge and includes source code.  NAMD2 is a major
improvement over NAMD 1.5, in both speed and simulation features.

This is a binary-only release of NAMD2.  We still have some additional
code cleanup before releasing the source in a couple of weeks.

NAMD2 is available via the web at http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/.
Mail any questions or comments to [email-masked].

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New Features in NAMD 2.0

- Reads CHARMM (or X-PLOR) formatted parameter files.

- Supports periodic and non-periodic MD simulations.

- Particle mesh Ewald full electrostatics for periodic simulations.

- Triple timestepping.

- Rigid bonds to hydrogen atoms.

- Fixed atoms implemented efficiently, no unnecessary force calculations.

- Berendsen and Langevin piston constant pressure methods.

- Steered Molecular Dynamics (SMD) features.

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Problems?

For problems or questions, send email to [email-masked].  If you
think you have found a bug, please include what machine you are
running on, and, if possible, a dump of the program output and/or a
copy of your input files.  Your feedback will help us improve NAMD2.

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NAMD2 Known Deficiencies

- PME does not parallelize well and has had limited testing.

- NAMD2 requires X-PLOR or CHARMM to produce the .psf structure input
files.  If you don't have one of these, you probably can't use NAMD2 yet.

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