Premium Solver for Excel 8.0
Introduction
Premium Solver is an upgrade for the standard Microsoft Excel Solver. It's 100% upwardly compatible from the standard Solver with the capacity to solve much larger problems -- up to 2,000 variables -- at speeds anywhere from three to 100 times faster than the standard Solver. If you've run up against the size limits of the standard Solver (200 decision variables) or found it too slow, upgrade to the Premium Solver today!
Fully Compatible
The Premium Solver is 100% upwardly compatible with the standard Solver. It replaces the standard Solver and appears when you select the usual Tools Solver... menu choice. You'll see a familiar Solver Parameters and Solver Options dialog with several new features. Your existing models can be solved with no changes, faster and more easily than before -- even if you use the new Evolutionary Solver. And your VBA code that uses the standard Solver will work as-is with the Premium Solver.
Greater Speed and Capacity
You'll be able to solve general nonlinear problems with twice the number of decision variables and constraints -- and the more common linear and integer problems with five times the number of variables (up to 1,000) and no limit on constraints. Just as important, larger problems which took minutes to solve with the standard Solver will often run from three to ten times faster. Speed gains are especially noticeable on linear problems with integer constraints.
Fast Problem Setup
Larger models which are linear problems often spend most of their time in problem setup, then reach a solution quickly. The Premium Solver will give you an immediate speedup -- often completing problem setup in half the time. But with a little work in designing your model to use certain common functions (like SUM and SUMPRODUCT) recognised by Fast Problem Setup, the Premium Solver can give you a really awesome speedup -- as much as 100 times faster.
More Robust
The Premium Solver performs better on difficult models, too -- including those which are harder to solve because they involve both very large and very small values, such as a financial model with dollar amounts in millions and rates of return in percent. It automatically rescales both linear and nonlinear problems, and offers improved stopping conditions for nonlinear problems where the standard Solver stops due to slow improvement in the target cell.
Plug-in Large-Scale LP Solver
You can combine the Premium Solver and any of three editions of the Large-Scale LP Solver Engine to solve linear programming problems of 8,000 variables, 32,000 variables, or an unlimited number of variables and constraints. NOTE: To effectively solve large-scale LP problems, you'll have to create your model in Fast Problem Setup form, as described in detail in the Premium Solver User Guide. You can upgrade to the Premium Solver Platform to handle linear problems using any kind of (linear) formulas in Excel, and still obtain fast problem setup times.