From: mark.abra...@anu.edu.au
To: gmx-users@gromacs.org
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 12:56:54 +1000
Subject: Re: [gmx-users] Precision in trajectory file
----- Original Message -----
From: Inon Sharony <inons...@tau.ac.il>
Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 20:55
Subject: [gmx-users] Precision in trajectory file
To: "gmx-users@gromacs.org" <gmx-users@gromacs.org>, gmx-developers
<gmx-develop...@gromacs.org>
> Good afternoon!
>
> It seems to me that although I'm running a double-precision
> installation of GROMACS, the printout to file (of the positions
> and velocities) is of much less precision. i.e. the computation
> is done on numbers with something like 16 significant digits,
> but the last 10 of those are simply truncated and lost (e.g.
> positions are given in single-precision as 0.000 nm, and in
> double-precision as 0.00000 nm). Since I've already spent
> computation time at getting double-precision, I'd like to make
> use of all of it -- for my own reasons. I already searched the
> manuals, mailing lists and source code for instruction but
> didn't find any.
> Could you please tell me how I can change the number of digits
> printed out (e.g. to the .trr file)? I'm looking for a more
> elegant solution than adding a printf line to the source code.
> Something along the lines of changing the format of numbers in
> the function that prints to .trr .
You seem confused about something. The .trr file contains a binary
representation of the value, in the appropriate precision. There's no nonsense
about the number of digits *it* has - it has full single/double-precision
binary floating-point numbers, and its precision is not measured in digits.
Some program that reads those numbers and writes human-readable forms might
choose to lose precision, but the underlying precision was always there...
There's no straightforward way to get large amounts of precision output with
GROMACS tools, because only a few of the digits are actually significant. You
could hack the code to g_traj or gmxdump to get all the precision if you really
want it.
Mark
For the next 4.5 beta I added a -fp option to g_traj that will print output in
full precision,
i.e. exponential format will all relevant decimals for both single and double
precision compilation.
Berk
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