NEOS provides state-of-the-art optimization software over Internet
ARGONNE, Ill. (July 17, 2007) – Optimization technology is essential to engineers,
scientists, businesses and even students. Optimization programs provide the
answers to questions ranging from creating the most efficient allocation
of resources to finding the healthiest meal at a fast food restaurant. But
writing program after program to solve one optimization problem after another
or even using an existing optimization library is often time-consuming or tedious.
To address this issue, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne
National Laboratory – in conjunction with researchers at Northwestern
University– developed
the Network-Enabled
Optimization System (NEOS), which provides state-of-the-art
numerical optimization software over the Internet. The system has become such
a success that it currently leads the field in the number of users at Department
of Energy labs.
“Because of its ease of use, NEOS has rapidly gained popularity,” said Jorge
Moré, Argonne senior computational mathematician, who has guided the
development of NEOS since its inception almost a decade ago. In 1999, fewer
than 20,000 people used NEOS. In the last year alone, that number had increased
to more than 225,000 users. NEOS is now the premier source of optimization
technology on the Web for users of optimization software.
The popularity is due to an increased awareness that many interesting and
difficult problems in science and engineering can be formulated and solved
as optimization problems, coupled with the fact that more than 50 solvers are
now available through the NEOS
Server.
NEOS has been used extensively for a variety of applications, including modeling
electricity markets, scheduling shifts for airport baggage handlers, predicting
global protein folding, studying the brain's representation system and designing
low-power VLSI (very-large-scale integration systems).
Here's how the NEOS Server works. A user can select a program, or “solver,” for
the type of optimization problem with which he or she is confronted. In order
to help with the choice, an “optimization tree” provides suggestions, and each
solver comes with sample problems and background information. Once the user
defines the problem and selects the solver, it compiles all subroutines, links
with the appropriate libraries and does the necessary computations. The user
is then sent the solution, along with various runtime statistics.
The latest release of NEOS provides several new features to make the server
even more attractive. One new feature is the introduction of a database that
enables reliable tracking of available solvers, running processes and jobs
waiting to be scheduled.
“It has made a big difference,” said Jason Sarich, the NEOS administrator. “We
are spending less time on process management and load-balancing issues and
more time on further improvements.”
Another new feature is the XML-RPC (Extensible Markup Language - Remote Procedure
Call) interface.
“This gives users considerable flexibility in accessing the system,” said
Todd Munson, an assistant computational scientist at Argonne who has been a
lead developer of the vast infrastructure behind the NEOS Server. “Users can
now easily write their own clients to access the NEOS server through a variety
of programming languages,” he said.
The NEOS team consisting of Moré and three Argonne colleagues won the
prestigious Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize in 2003 for excellence in computational
mathematical programming. In presenting this prize, which is awarded only once
every three years, the Mathematical
Programming Society noted, “The NEOS Server
has had a tremendous impact in the field of optimization. The influence of
NEOS is such that in many applied fields the NEOS Server is synonymous with
optimization.”
The NEOS Server is maintained under the aegis of the Optimization Technology
Center , a joint project of Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University
, and is operated with support from the Mathematical, Information and Computational
Sciences Division of the Office of Advanced
Scientific Computing Research in
the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology.
The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic
and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne
researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities,
and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific
problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for
a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed
by UChicago
Argonne, LLC for
the U.S.
Department of Energy's Office
of Science.
For more information, please
contact Eleanor Taylor (630/252-5510 or media@anl.gov)
at Argonne.
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