Refactor Restraint module - Redmine #3040
The Restraint module introduced in GROMACS 2019 is more of a special case than it was intended to be. It should be normalized with respect to the other MD modules. However, some design consensus is needed in several respects.
In GROMACS 2019, an object implementing a restraint is added to the primary MdRunner in each process with a public member function of MdRunner, before mdrunner() is called. This member function adds an object (via a IRestraintPotential handle) to the list of restraints managed on each CPU process. Each process has one RestraintManger implementation object, though each MdRunner instance (in the case of tMPI) has a unique handle to it. The RestraintManager then takes care of registering an IForceProvider for each restraint object it is managing.
Some of the reasons for this architecture are alleviated by work under #2945 and related issues.
It would seem to make sense that, with the Restraint module in the GROMACS source, all restraints should have their force calculations combined under a single IForceProvider interaction with a single Restraint module object.
However, the Restraint module and RestraintManager were intended as temporary shims until MD modules could be acquired abstractly by the MdRunner through the SimulationContext or MdRunnerBuilder. We could move the RestraintManager to a public interface of the Restraint module that it is configured by the client and then passed to the MdRunnerBuilder, which then makes the manager available to the RestraintModule in an initialization process like that of the other MD modules. Or we could do away with the Restraint module as a non-conformant internal MD module and just have the MdRunner request IMDModule handles from the Context.
We might assume the Restraint module will remain as a built-in module, though, to support optimization of special cases of IForceProviders, in which case it can be restructured to
- Provide a single IForceProvider for all restraints operating under the Restraint API.
- Remove the need for MdRunner::addPotential with either a public interface to the module or with a protocol for the module to initialize itself with function objects provided by the SimulationContext.
Note that externally implemented restraints depend on the installed
headers gromacs/restraintpotential.h
and gmxapi/md/mdmodule.h
.
Clients use the gmxapi::addSessionRestraint()
function to attach a
restraint when launching a simulation. gmx::MdRunner::addPotential()
is used internally to implement gmxapi::addSessionRestraint()
.
Restraint’s internal facilities also need to be modernized with respect to LocalAtomSets and internal library data structures.
(from redmine: issue id 3040, created on 2019-07-18 by eirrgang)
- Relations:
- relates #3038 (closed)
- relates #2945 (closed)
- relates #2375 (closed)
- relates #2590 (closed)
- relates #2492 (closed)
- relates #2623 (closed)