About the Project

General Information

Spinhenge@home-Workunits have time, ram and storage requirements, which depend on the size of the molecule being computed. Workunits with higher requirements result in higher credits.

At present a Windows and Linux application is available. However, there are plans to develop a MacOS version too. Our application is called "metropolis". There are different versions (2.31, 2.32, ...) existing. At any time you can see the current version here.

At the moment Workunits which serve for calaculation of different molecules are sent out. All about new WU's could be read here.

Each Workunit consists of 4 input files. The files with the suffix: *.nn, *.jj and *.ww contain the structural data. The XML file contains all relevant starting conditions. For a better understanding, the tasks of the individual variables are embedded in "<comments>". The files will not exceed 1 MB.

The results remain buffered ('Checkpointing'). This is realized.

We assign credits in accordance with the standard BOINC system (details here).

What is Spinhenge@home?

Spinhenge@home came alive when I (Thomas Hilbig) requested my professor's advice for a topic of my dissertation. He proposed to realize "statistical computations for Spin dynamics" by means of distributed computing. The platform was ought to be BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), since BOINC had already been utilized for other scientific projects.During a web-search I figured out what was coming up and decided to follow my professors suggestion.

Who benefits of this project?

In the research-field "nano-technology", in the zone "Molecular Magnets: Controlled Nanoscale Magnetism", promoted by the American energy ministry (DOE) of interdisciplinary main research project, physicists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers are assigned to make molecular magnetic materials technologically appropriable. Thereby mathematical calculations need to be performed. Because these calculations are very time-consuming, a synchronized execution on numerous computers is obvious.

Why especially participate this simulation?
In all industrial nations the nano-technology is being celebrated as one of the key technologies of the 21. Century. Particularly with regard to future electronics, pioneering innovations are expected. Nano-technology lives from the vision to be able to control matter specifically at the atomic level. While this is in general still a pipe-dream, these processes meanwhile attained a degree of quality which permits almost without limitation but with surprising systematic the creation of any magnetic molecules within the scope of "chemical engineering". By means of these magnetic molecules new nano-magnetic applications, as highly integrated memory modules or tiny magnetic switches will be developed in the future. Furthermore biotechnological and medical applications (e.g. local tumor chemotherapy) are aimed to achieve. In the context of this project in co-operation with the universities Osnabrück and Bielefeld and the Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, USA, extensive numeric Simulationen concerning the physical characteristics of magnetic molecules are processed. Therewith the subject is especially to discover highly promising structures, who could, regarding their new characteristics serve the chemists quasi as samples to synthesize analogical new molecules. That way, recently a structure could be found, which constitutes a tiny magnetic switch (see picture).

Who is running Spinhenge@home?

Spinhenge@home is a project of the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (FB2). Contact is Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Christian Schröder of the chair of applied mathematics and natural sciences, furthermore Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Hilbig.