2.1 History of VASP

Here is a small history of the development of VASP (from my personal viewpoint, G. Kresse).

• The original version goes back to Mike Payne, and was developed at MIT. The version we got used local PP only, and a CP like algorithm, only orthorhombic cells could be treated at this time.
• In July 1989, Jürgen Hafner brought the code to Vienna.
• In Sep 1991, I started with the work on the VASP code.
• In Okt 1992, US PP were included in the code, the selfconsistency loop was introduced to treat metals efficiently.
• In Jan 1993, J. Furthmüller joined the group, he wrote an improved charge density mixing, contributed the symmetry code, the INCAR-reader and a fast 3d-FFT etc.
• In Feb 1995, J. Furthmüller left Vienna.
• September 1996, conversion to F90 in the version 4.X. MPI (and shmem) parallelization of the code.

The tetrahedron code was taken from a LMTO-program (original author unknown but it might be Andersen, Jepsen or Blöchl). The communication shmem/MPI kernels were developed by Peter Lockey at Daresbury, and the communication kernel for the parallel FFT was written as far as we know by D. White and M. Payne. Several parts of VASP were also co-developed by A. Eichler, and other members of the group in Vienna.