  An archetypical spin-glass metallic alloy, Cu0.83Mn0.17, is studied by means
of an ab-initio based approach. First-principles calculations are employed to
obtain effective chemical, strain-induced and magnetic exchange interactions,
as well as static atomic displacements, and the interactions are subsequently
used in thermodynamic simulations. It is shown that the calculated atomic and
magnetic short-range order accurately reproduces the results of
neutron-scattering experiments. In particular, it is confirmed that the alloy
exhibits a tendency toward ordering and the corresponding ordered phase is
revealed. The magnetic structure is represented by spin-spiral clusters
accompanied by weaker ferromagnetic short-range correlations. The spin-glass
transition temperature obtained in Monte Carlo simulations by a finite-size
scaling technique, 57 K, is in reasonable agreement with experimental data, 78
K.
