Obtaining a Licence

Research Computing does not have a license for VASP. See this page for information about licensing:

https://www.vasp.at/faqs

In short, VASP licenses are given to well-defined research groups only. They are not granted by department or institution. Furthermore, they are not personal licenses. All members of a VASP group have to work in the same organizational unit (department, institute) at the same location. The way to get a license is for PI of a research group to obtain it.

Once a research group obtains a license, Research Computing can help with the installation of the software and configuring the license server.

Installation

VASP provides installation directions for Version 6.X.X. Here is a sample procedure for Della (CPU):

$ ssh <YourNetID>@della8.princeton.edu
$ cd /path/to/vasp.6.2.1
$ cp arch/makefile.include.linux_intel_omp  ./makefile.include
$ module purge
$ module load intel/2021.1.2 intel-mpi/intel/2021.1.1
$ make DEPS=1 -j8 all

The code should build successfully. The next step is to run the test suite:

$ export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/vasp.6.3.1/bin
$ unset I_MPI_HYDRA_BOOTSTRAP # for testing only, do not include in Slurm script
$ unset I_MPI_PMI_LIBRARY     # for testing only, do not include in Slurm script
$ make test

The directions above build an OpenMP/MPI version of VASP. Here is a general Slurm script for such a case. Be sure to include the two environment modules and the definition of the PATH environment variable in your Slurm script. You will also need to conduct a scaling analysis to find the optimal Slurm directives.

Below is a sample Slurm script:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --job-name=vasp          # create a short name for your job
#SBATCH --nodes=1                # node count
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=8      # total number of tasks per node
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=2        # cpu-cores per task (>1 if multi-threaded tasks)
#SBATCH --mem-per-cpu=4G         # memory per cpu-core (4G is default)
#SBATCH --time=00:01:00          # total run time limit (HH:MM:SS)
#SBATCH --mail-type=begin        # send email when job begins
#SBATCH --mail-type=end          # send email when job ends
#SBATCH --mail-user=<YourNetID>@princeton.edu

export OMP_NUM_THREADS=$SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/vasp.6.3.1/bin

module purge
module load intel/2021.1.2 intel-mpi/intel/2021.1.1

srun vasp_std <inputs>