What'sBest! includes major solver enhancements to increase speed and reliability across broad classes of linear, integer, quadratic and general nonlinear models.
Improved Speed with Multicore Support
The solvers have been enhanced to take advantage of computers with multicore processors to boost speed on a wide range of problems. Multicore extensions have been added to the Barrier, Global, Integer, Linear, Multistart and Stochastic solvers.
Improved Mixed Integer Solver
The heuristics for finding good feasible solutions to integer models have been significantly improved. Simple rounding and feasibility pump now use bound propagation to improve the current path to a new feasible integer solution. A new polishing heuristic has been added to improve the best integer solution using a pool of previous obtained integer solutions and the current relaxation. As a result, on many integer models the solver is able to find better feasible integer solutions in a shorter amount of time.
Faster Better Multistart Solver
The Multistart solver has been improved significantly achieving performance improvements of up to two times compared to the previous version. The chances of finding the globally optimal solution have improved by 10-15% over a wide range of non-convex models.
More Powerful Stochastic Solver
Extensive improvements have been made to the Nested Benders Decomposition to make it up to six times faster. Chance-programming solver is now equipped with a Genetic Algorithm to find high-quality feasible solutions to large-scale instances. Models in this class can now also be solved using the Simple Benders Decomposition method.
New Branch-and-Price Solver
A new Branch-and-Price solver with multicore support has been added for improved performance on problems with block structures. Detection of decomposition structures has also been improved in support of the Branch-and-Price solver.
New Scenario Display Feature
A feature has been added to allow you to browse the scenarios of your Stochastic Programming / Simulation model in a preview window and select one to be displayed in the spreadsheet.
Support for More Distributions
Additions to the list of supported distributions include Beta-Binomial and Symmetric Stable Paretian distribution. Stochastic programming models may also specify random variables as having these new distributions.
New Simulation Capability
You can now specify random parameters and their associated distributions on non-optimization models and have What'sBest! calculate the values of specified reporting cells and display their histograms.
Expanded Excel Function Support
Support has been added for Excel’s Cumulative Distribution and Probability Density functions and has been improved for Excel’s Present Value function.
Improved Histogram Generation
Enhancements have been made to the generation of histograms in Stochastic Programming/Planning Under Uncertainty.