We've just released Analytic Solver V2024 Q3, with new versions of Analytic Solver Desktop and Cloud (for Excel users), Solver SDK (for developers), and our cloud platform RASON. In this release, we’ve gone beyond our conversational “AI Agent”, introduced one year earlier in Analytic Solver V2023 Q3: Our new “AI Assistant” doesn’t just consult our User Guides and publicly available info – it seeks to “understand” the model you are working on, so it can assist you in improving your model, or fixing problems with it!
But we don’t just focus on the latest AI methods – we also improve the usability and performance of the optimization and simulation solvers you use every day.
New AI Assistant
The most visible change in V2024 Q3 is on the Analytic Solver Ribbon, which now sports two “AI icons”: On the far right next to the Help icon is an AI Ask Question icon, similar to the capability we introduced in Analytic Solver V2023 Q3 (but enhanced): Ask it a question, and it will answer conversationally, with links to our example models, User Guides and Reference Guides. On the far left next to the Model icon is a new AI Assist icon: When you click this icon, the AI Assistant will examine and use “as context” your currently-open model in Excel (this also works in our cloud platform RASON): You can then ask a question and engage in a dialog with the Assistant about your model. For example, you can ask “is my model missing an essential element?” or “my model is building products from parts in inventory, how can I add another part?”
Optimization Improvements
In this release, we’ve included the latest versions of the Gurobi Solver (their 11.0.3), the XPRESS Solver (their 43.1.3.0), and the MOSEK Solver (their 10.2.0.3). For all the Solver Engines, we’ve expanded “Verbose” logging (enabled via the Task Pane Platform tab General – Log Level option) to include all the solution progress information that each Solver can provide. And in the case of the Gurobi Solver working on a non-integer, non-convex QCP (Quadratically Constrained Problem), Verbose logging now provides “branch level” solution progress info that just wasn’t available before.
Simulation Improvements
In Monte Carlo simulation, we’ve added new “alternative parameter” distribution functions named PsiFatigueLifeAlt() and PsiFrechetAlt(). The first of these, the “fatigue life” or Birnbaum–Saunders distribution, is extensively used in reliability problems to model failure times. The second, the Frechet or inverse Weibull distribution, is used to model extreme events, for example in weather forecasting and hydroelectric power application.
And There's More to Come...
As you likely already know, in both our AI Agent / Ask Question and our AI Assistant, we're leveraging the power of OpenAI's ChatGPT 4-o "under the hood" (so far, paying its cost ourselves). As with many developments in optimization and simulation modeling and "solving" over decades, we were "first in our field", working with OpenAI and Generative AI 18 months ago, and we're now delivering our "second generation" AI agent.
As we write this, OpenAI is previewing a new "OpenAI-o1" version that is better able to "reason through complex tasks and solve harder problems than previous models in science, coding, and math". If and when this becomes available to us (initially only the "highest paid tier" of OpenAI developers will have access), you can be sure we'll aim to bring the benefits to you!