Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the installation and usage of POSYDON, there are certain prerequisites that must be met. This page outlines all the necessary requirements for a smooth experience with the tool.

Operating System

POSYDON has been tested on the following operating systems:

  • Linux (Ubuntu 20.04 and newer, CentOS 7, etc.)

  • macOS (10.14 and newer)

POSYDON is developed and tested on Linux (and in particular on HPC clusters), which is the platform POSYDON is officially tested against. We aim to keep macOS working, but if you hit an issue on macOS please see the troubleshooting guide.

Software Dependencies

  1. Python 3.11

  2. More dependencies are defined in our setup file (pyproject.toml) and are installed automatically during the installation. To keep different package versions from interfering with each other, we strongly encourage you to use a dedicated conda environment for POSYDON.

Hardware Requirements

Storage: The exact footprint depends on which data release and how many metallicities you download. See Data Releases for the canonical numbers.

In order to run a population synthesis model with POSYDON, you must ensure that you have enough free storage space. It depends on the dataset how much free space you need:

  • DR2: approximately 140GB (the default in the installation)

  • one of the eight metallicities in DR2: approximately 20GB

  • DR1: approximately 40GB

This is crucial for downloading the lite MESA simulation library, interpolation objects, and other auxiliary files used by the code.

Memory:

  • Minimum: 8GB RAM

  • Recommended: 16GB RAM

The amount of memory a population run needs per CPU, and the related dump_rate setting, are covered in the installation guide and the population-synthesis examples.

CPU:

  • A multi-core processor is recommended for optimal performance (e.g. an HPC cluster), since a run is parallelized across CPUs (one process per CPU).

Installation Steps

Proceed to Installation Guide to understand the steps required to get POSYDON up and running.

Final Notes

Ensure all the above prerequisites are met before initiating the setup for POSYDON to ensure a seamless and hassle-free experience.

If you encounter any issues, please refer to the Troubleshooting Guide or contact us.