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2019-06-16: This project is finally over.

The inability of the project to provide sufficient number of WUs for everyone provokes major server overloads during the WU generation each two weeks. These overloads significantly complicate downloading/uploading of the work. Continuing the project will cause an unpleasant experience for the participants.

Considering that the power of BOINC is actually not required for this project since the project reached its goal in September 2017, I think this is a right moment to finally end XANSONS for COD.

I would like to thank everyone for helping the project all that time!

2019-06-08: 457 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-05-25: 691 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-05-11: 495 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-04-27: 455 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-04-13: 428 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-03-30: 510 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-03-16: 374 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-03-02: 511 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-02-16: 521 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-02-02: 474 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-01-19: 705 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2019-01-05: No new structures today

Probably due to the holidays, less than 20 new structures were added to the Crystallography Open Database over the past two weeks. It will be better to process them along with the next bunch (January 19th).

2018-12-22: 380 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-12-08: 461 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-11-24: 592 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-11-10: 480 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-10-27: 519 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-10-13: 388 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-09-29: 385 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-09-15: 467 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-09-01: 439 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-08-18: 429 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-08-04: 448 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-07-21: 449 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-07-07: 404 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-06-23: 1071 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-06-09: 467 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-05-26: 494 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-05-12: 602 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-04-28: New article and another small bunch of WUs

The paper about this project was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Engineering along with other papers from BOINC:FAST'17 conference. You can read it here.

478 new structures are added for processing.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-04-14: 332 new structures

Another small bunch of WUs.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-03-31: 485 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-03-17: 483 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-03-03: 443 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-02-17: 642 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-02-03: 1018 new structures

New COD entries are added.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-01-21: 732 new structures

Another small bunch of COD entries is added for processing.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2018-01-06: About 3900 structures were added for processing

These include only 461 new COD entries. The other structures are the old ones that were impossible to process previously due to problems (now solved) with parsing of CIF files.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2017-12-24: 643 new structures

New COD entries are added for processing.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2017-12-09: 700 new structures

Another small bunch of new COD entries is added for processing.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2017-11-26: 3032 new structures were added for processing

A bunch of new COD structures (for October and November 2017) was added to the project. From now on the updates will be more regular (about twice a month).

Also, now the structure is considered processed by the user if the user calculated at least one diffraction pattern (x-ray or the neutron one, does not matter) for this structure. So, the numbers of processed COD entries are increased for all users. Now, it is also possible to view the complete list of the COD structures processed by the user (see 'view all' link near the number of processed COD entries). Note that displaying this list may take some time for the top participants who have 100,000+ structures processed.

Update. All WUs are sent to the hosts.

2017-09-29: That's all! You did it!

It remains only to wait for the tasks in progress. Thank you very much for participating! You helped create the database of simulated powder diffraction patterns: http://database.xansons4cod.com.

You calculated:

x-ray diffraction patterns for 356 202 structures (92.6% of all COD entries),

neutron diffraction patterns for 370 533 structures (96.3% of all COD entries).

Nikolay Khrapov almost finished the database interface. We still need to write the "About" page which is left blank for now.

Since COD itself has advanced search by chemical composition and other properties of the structure, for our database searching only by COD ID is enough. The structure's page (example) contains interactive charts showing simulated powder diffraction patterns, links to the data files with these patterns (in text format) and the list of volunteers who contributed to this page. If the COD ID does not exist or was not processed, the respective page is empty.
Note that despite the COD ID is a 7-digit number, only about 384,600 entries exist and the IDs do not necessary go by numerical order (there are gaps).

2017-09-28: Calculations are almost complete!

WUs for the last COD entries are sent out, but we still have to recalculate some of the old WUs (mostly for the GPU). It will take another 10 hours or so.

Account creation is disabled.

2017-09-26: New structures added to the processing list

Updated the processing list of COD IDs with 5350 new structures added to COD since project restart (June 18th).

2017-09-22: Server overload

Over the past 9 hours, the load on the disk has increased manyfold. This resulted in a decrease of the generated WUs and the problem with the validation. Please, refrain from viewing your results if possible. Viewing the results database leads to a heavy disk load. Thank you for understanding!

Update Showing the results is temporarily disabled.

Update 2 Things started getting back to normal immediately after showing the results was disabled.

Update 3 Showing the results is enabled again. However, this feature will be disabled in case of high disk load.

2017-09-12: BOINC:FAST 2017 conference

The report about this project was made at the BOINC:FAST 2017 conference. Here is the list of talks. You can find the amazing report about LHC@Home there as well as the reports about some new projects: Acoustics@Home (report), AndersonAttack@home (report), RakeSearch (report) and USPEX@Home (report).

2017-08-15: SSL encryption

We are trying to configure SSL encryption. This can cause a short-term server malfunction. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Update
Nikolay has successfully configured SSL encryption for this project. Now, the most valuable communications are secured.

The emails are also SSL-encrypted. Those who previously had problems receiving emails from the project (password recovery, etc.) will now be able to receive them. Just don't forget to check the spam folder.

2017-08-04: Badges

I?ve added badges for total credit (for users and teams) and total number of different COD entries processed (only for users).

The steps for total credit are:
10,000 (graphite)
100,000 (bronze)
1,000,000 (silver)
10,000,000 (gold)
100,000,000 (diamond)
The x-ray powder diffraction patterns of respective materials are shown on the badges (since the diffraction pattern of ordinary gold and silver look identical, I used the diffraction pattern of hexagonal gold nanostructured films for the gold).

The steps for total number of different COD entries processed are:
1,000; 2,000; ?; 9,000 (bronze)
10,000; 20,000; ?; 90,000 (silver)
100,000; 200,000; 300,000 (gold)

2017-07-12: Active phase of the project is completed by 20% in the first 24 days

Only about 0.2% of the obtained results should be recalculated due to bugs in the early versions of the apps (the results obtained with the version 1.04 mostly). All other results are included in the final database.

2017-07-12: Crystallography Open Database server is temporarily down

We get the input data for the WUs from the http://crystallography.net. So, while this server is down we can't generate new WUs.

Update
Added a mirror.

Update 2
It seems that http://crystallography.net/ is up again. But if the problem recurs in the future, the requests will be redirected to the mirror server, http://qiserver.ugr.es/cod/.

2017-06-28: Source code of the client app released

You can download it here.

2017-06-28: Source code of the client app is released

You can download it here.

2017-06-25: CPU usage in GPU apps

The new CUDA app 1.03 does not use the CPU core anymore except for the computation of the atomic ensemble in the beginning.
The new OpenCL app 1.03 has a command line option --nowait which when specified reduces the CPU load to zero but at the same time makes the system almost unusable due to lagging. If you do not use the system while crunching, you may add this to your app_config.xml:

<app_version>
<app_name>xansons_gpu</app_name>
<plan_class>opencl_ati_102_windows</plan_class>
<cmdline>--nowait</cmdline>
</app_version>
Replace 'opencl_ati_102_windows' with the appropriate plan class: opencl_ati_102_mac, opencl_ati_102_linux, opencl_intel_gpu_102_windows, opencl_intel_gpu_102_linux, opencl_intel_gpu_102_mac or opencl_nvidia_102_linux.

Update
All OpenCL 1.03 versions are marked as beta due to potential memory leak problem.


Update 2
The 1.03 app uses exactly the same amount of memory as 1.02 does, so there is no memory leak. The memory consumption depends on the WU. Those tasks which have 'solid_material' in their names may consume up to 1.5 GB of memory depending on the initial data. Please take this into consideration when launching multiple WUs in parallel.
I'll try to reduce memory consumption in the next version.

2017-06-18: Maintenance is over!

The project is restarted with new native BOINC apps and additional computational scenario.

Now the large WUs can be assigned only to the GPU and the small ones only to the CPU.

GPU apps do not require dedicated CPU core by default anymore. If you notice any performance issues caused by this, consider using custom app configuration. Place this file in the project's folder.

The apps of this project do not make checkpoints. If stopped, the task will be restarted from the beginning. The task execution time should not exceed 10 minutes for moderate PCs. However, some tasks may take longer to complete on low-end PCs. This is particularly true for low-end GPUs. If the execution time of tasks is unacceptably high for your GPU, consider disabling it in the "Preferences for this project" in your profile page.

The project is in beta-testing stage. Bugs are more than likely. However, all the results obtained during this stage will be included in the final database If no critical errors are found.

Thank you for participating!

2017-06-05: Project restart in June

The maintenance is almost over. The new native BOINC apps are being tested in the local network now. We expect the project to be restarted at the end of next week. This will be preceded by server and storage upgrade. The work on the database is still in progress and will continue in parallel with the computations.

Also, the paper ?XANSONS for COD: a new small BOINC project in crystallography? was accepted for presentation at the BOINC:FAST?2017 conference which is to be held in Petrozavodsk, Russia in August.

2017-02-07: XaNSoNS is published in SoftwareX

The article about XaNSoNS, the software this project is based on, has been published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal SoftwareX. The article is open-access and can be found here.

The paper was submitted to the journal about a month before this project was launched, so I was able to add only a brief mention of the BOINC project during the revision process.