mopac

Overview

MOPAC is a semiempirical quantum chemistry software package for the prediction of chemical properties and modeling of chemical reactions.

Version 2016-18.08 is available.

Restrictions on use

All users must agree to abide by the MOPAC End User Agreement.

MOPAC is for academic, not for profit use only.

All users must cite their use of the software in publications. The correct citation to use is given at the start of the output file of every job.

You must be in the mopac group to access it. Please email its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk to be added to the group.

Set up procedure

We now recommend loading modulefiles within your jobscript so that you have a full record of how the job was run. See the example jobscript below for how to do this. Alternatively, you may load modulefiles on the login node and let the job inherit these settings.

To load the modulefile use this command:

module load apps/binapps/mopac/2016-64bit-18.08

Running the application

Please do not run MOPAC on the login node. Jobs should be submitted to the compute nodes via batch.

Serial batch job submission

Make sure you have the modulefile loaded then create a batch submission script, for example:

#!/bin/bash --login
#$ -cwd             # Job will run from the current directory

module load apps/binapps/mopac/2016-64bit-18.08

MOPAC2016.exe mydataset

where mydataset is replaced with the name of your .mop, .arc, or .dat without the suffix.

Submit the jobscript using:

qsub scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

Parallel batch job submission

MOPAC2016 can run in threaded mode; see the documentation. E.g. for four threads:

#!/bin/bash --login
#$ -pe smp.pe 4

module load apps/binapps/mopac/2016-64bit-18.08

export OMP_NUM_THREADS=$NSLOTS

MOPAC2016.exe mydataset

where mydataset is replaced with the name of your .mop, .arc, or .dat without the suffix.

Submit the jobscript using:

qsub scriptname

where scriptname is the name of your jobscript.

Serial (1-core) Interactive Jobs

To schedule a serial interactive job run the following command on the login node (not in a jobscript):

qrsh -l short

This will log you in to a compute node where you can run Mopac in an interactive manner. Please note you will still need to use the module command to set up applications as usual. Interactive sessions are limited to 1 hour.

Parallel (multi-core) Interactive Jobs

To schedule a multi-core interactive job run the following command on the login node:

qrsh -l short -pe smp.pe 2
                         #
                         # Number of cores

You will be logged in to a compute node where you can run Mopac in an interactive manner and will have access to 2 CPU cores (in this example) and 4GB per core. You should ensure any applications you run use only the number of cores reserved for you. Please note you will still need to use the module command to set up applications as usual as well setting the following variable export OMP_NUM_THREADS=$NSLOTS . Interactive sessions are limited to 1 hour.

Further info

Updates

Last modified on October 5, 2021 at 10:01 am by Chris Grave