Atomistix A/S was a software company developing tools for atomic scale modelling. It was headquartered in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark, with a subsidiary for Asia Pacific in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and for the Americas in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. In September 2008 Atomistix A/S went bankrupt, but in December 2008 the newly founded company QuantumWise announced that they had acquired all assets from the Atomistix estate and would continue the development and marketing of the products

Atomistix ToolKit Atomistix ToolKit (ATK) is a commercial software for atomic-scale modeling and simulation of nanosystems. The software was originally developed by Atomistix A/S, and was later acquired by QuantumWise following the Atomistix bankruptcy. QuantumWise w ...

and

Atomistix Virtual NanoLab Atomistix Virtual NanoLab (VNL) is a commercial point-and-click software for simulation and analysis of physical and chemical properties of nanoscale devices. Virtual NanoLab is developed and sold commercially by QuantumWise A/S. QuantumWise was t ...

. QuantumWise was then acquired by

Synopsys Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design ...

in 2017.

History

The company was founded in October 2003 by Dr. Kurt Stokbro, Dr. Jeremy Taylor and Dr. Thomas Magnussen. Dr. Stokbro and Dr. Taylor are co-authors on the article introducing the electron transport method and program TranSIESTA (based on the

SIESTA A ''siesta'' (from Spanish, pronounced and meaning "nap") is a short nap taken in the early afternoon, often after the midday meal. Such a period of sleep is a common tradition in some countries, particularly those in warm-weather zones. The ...

program for academic research. This method, and methods used in Dr. Taylor Ph.D. research, was the starting point for Atomistix first product, TranSIESTA-C. The C refers to the program being written in the

C programming language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as ...

as opposed to Fortran in which TranSIESTA was written. This code had been completely reengineered and further developed into the commercial products marketed by the company today. Since the very beginning the company had been working in close collaboration with the Nano-Science Center at the

Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics. ...

of Copenhagen University, to enhance the product development, and had instituted cooperations with leading nanotechnology centers, experts and private companies around the world.

Business

The management team consisted of: *Børge Witthøft, President and

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

(CEO). *Dr. Jeremy Taylor, co-founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO). *Klaus Melchior,

Chief Operating Officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the "C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...

(COO) and

Chief Financial Officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

(CFO). *Niels Nielsen,

Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...

(VP) Sales and Marketing.

Products

Atomistix A/S provided the following products: *

(ATK) *

(VNL) Legacy Products: *IView *TranSIESTA-C These products represented a package of integrated software modules for quantum chemistry modelling, providing a user-friendly graphical interface interaction to complex computational methods. From the usability point of view, the setup of the computation is done through

, a metaphoric interface, mimicking ''

in silico In biology and other experimental sciences, an ''in silico'' experiment is one performed on computer or via computer simulation. The phrase is pseudo-Latin for 'in silicon' (correct la, in silicio), referring to silicon in computer chips. It ...

'' the approach of an experiment in a real laboratory. The underlying computational engine is the

(ATK) which is the next generation of TranSIESTA-C. ATK also has a

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

based interface

NanoLanguage NanoLanguage is a scripting interface built on top of the interpreted programming language Python, and is primarily intended for simulation of physical and chemical properties of nanoscale systems. Introduction Over the years, several electron ...

and a text file interface. The methods used in the software products are based primarily on

density functional theory Density-functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (or nuclear structure) (principally the ground state) of many-body ...

(DFT) and non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) techniques and also all the underlying

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

References

Sources

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External links