Solver Add-on comes bundled with five optimization engines: Standard LP/Quadratic, Standard LSGRG Nonlinear, Standard Evolutionary, Standard Interval Global Solver and Standard SOCP Barrier engine. Each engine is limited to 200 variables and 100 constraints.
Note: Users of Frontline’s Premium Solver® and Analytic Solver® tools for desktop Excel can ‘publish’ their models to Google Sheets, and solve much larger problems, use more powerful Solver engines and more computing time, up to the limits of their desktop licenses (from 2,000 to over 2 million decision variables) – all using the same Solver add-on. For more information, see the Frontline Solver User Guide.
The nonlinear LSGRG Solver handles large-scale smooth nonlinear (NLP) problems and includes Multistart or “clustering” methods for global optimization that can utilize multiple processor cores.
The LP/Quadratic Solver handles both linear programming (LP) and quadratic programming (QP) problems. Advanced methods for LP/MIP problems yield solutions as much as hundreds of times faster than the Excel Solver.
The Evolutionary Solver (in all products with optimization capabilities) uses a combination of genetic and evolutionary algorithms, tabu and scatter search methods, and classical optimization methods.
The Interval Global uses state-of-the-art interval methods to find the globally optimal solution to a nonlinear optimization problem, all real solutions to a system of nonlinear equations, or an “inner solution” to a system of nonlinear inequalities.
The SOCP Barrier Solver in the Platform products uses an interior point method to solve linear (LP), quadratic (QP), quadratically constrained (QCP), and second order cone programming (SOCP) problems – the natural generalization of linear and quadratic programming.