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Keep AtomicDB online: solving atomic chess
0% complete
€125 raised of €2K
2 donations
Hi, I'm Belzedar. I run AtomicDB, a free public database that tries to do for atomic chess what tablebases did for endgames: work out, position by position, who wins and how.
Where it stands today (18 October 2026):
- 86.6 million positions stored, 16.5 million of them practically solved
- 319 trillion engine nodes searched, all of it on computers donated by volunteers
- a free explorer and a public API that anyone can use: https://belzedar.duckdns.org/atomicdb/
- all the code is open source: https://github.com/Belzedar94/OpenBench
The volunteers bring the computing power. What nobody donates is the machine in the middle: the server that stores the tree, hands out the work and serves the website. I have been paying for that one myself.
Why I'm asking now
The tree has outgrown that server. The database is 104 GB and grows by about 1 GB every day. In September the disk filled up and the whole project was down for five days. I bought extra storage to bring it back, and at today's pace the main disk will be full again in about two and a half weeks.
Memory is the other wall. The database indexes alone take 55 GB and the server has 16 GB, so the database spends much of its time waiting for the disk.
What the money pays for
A server that fits the project: 64 GB of memory and two fast 1 TB disks, and room to keep growing after that.
- Server, 12 months: €1,290 (about €107 a month, VAT included)
- Backups stored away from that machine, 12 months: €46
- Payment fees charged by GoFundMe (2.9% + €0.25 per donation): about €80
- Room to grow: €584. The tree keeps growing, so this pays for more disk or a bigger machine when it's needed, or for more months on this one.
Total: €2,000
No salaries and nothing for me. If we raise less, the first €200 already buys enough extra disk to keep the current server from filling up for another year, and everything above that goes towards the move.
I will post the invoices in the project's Discord so everyone can see where the money went.
If you play atomic, if you have ever looked a line up in the explorer, or if you just like the idea of a chess variant being solved in the open, this is what keeps it running.
Thank you.
Belzedar
Organizer
