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DiSCaMB : a software library for aspherical atom model X‐ray scattering factor calculations with CPUs and GPUs
Author(s) -
Chodkiewicz Michał L.,
Migacz Szymon,
Rudnicki Witold,
Makal Anna,
Kalinowski Jarosław A.,
Moriarty Nigel W.,
Grosse-Kunstleve Ralf W.,
Afonine Pavel V.,
Adams Paul D.,
Dominiak Paulina Maria
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of applied crystallography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.429
H-Index - 162
ISSN - 1600-5767
DOI - 10.1107/s1600576717015825
Subject(s) - atom (system on chip) , x ray , scattering , physics , software , atomic physics , nuclear physics , computer science , optics , parallel computing , operating system
It has been recently established that the accuracy of structural parameters from X‐ray refinement of crystal structures can be improved by using a bank of aspherical pseudoatoms instead of the classical spherical model of atomic form factors. This comes, however, at the cost of increased complexity of the underlying calculations. In order to facilitate the adoption of this more advanced electron density model by the broader community of crystallographers, a new software implementation called DiSCaMB , `densities in structural chemistry and molecular biology', has been developed. It addresses the challenge of providing for high performance on modern computing architectures. With parallelization options for both multi‐core processors and graphics processing units (using CUDA), the library features calculation of X‐ray scattering factors and their derivatives with respect to structural parameters, gives access to intermediate steps of the scattering factor calculations (thus allowing for experimentation with modifications of the underlying electron density model), and provides tools for basic structural crystallographic operations. Permissively (MIT) licensed, DiSCaMB is an open‐source C++ library that can be embedded in both academic and commercial tools for X‐ray structure refinement.