Extreme speed, available in Crystal Ball Decision Optimizer, runs simulations up to 100 times faster than Normal speed. With Extreme speed, you won’t need to wait for simulation results or compromise on the number of trials you run. Extreme speed makes it more practical to use Crystal Ball tools that run multi-simulations or to seek optimal solutions with OptQuest in a reasonable length of time.
The Extreme Speed feature uses PSI Technology, a high-speed, Microsoft Excel-compatible Polymorphic Spreadsheet Interpreter for running simulations on workbooks. This technology was developed by Frontline Systems, the maker of Microsoft Excel’s Solver add-in. PSI Technology supports nearly all of the 320 standard Microsoft Excel functions, including the financial, statistical, and engineering functions that are part of the Analysis Toolpak.
By default, Crystal Ball Decision Optimizer is set to use Extreme speed when initially loaded. If a model is not compatible with Extreme speed, a dialog offers the opportunity to downshift to Normal speed temporarily for that simulation. Compatibility Issues below, explains conditions that cause a model to be incompatible with Extreme speed. The simulation speed can be changed using the Speed tab in the Run Preferences dialogs (see Setting Speed Preferences for details).
This section contains the following main topics:
Because the Extreme Speed feature uses the Polymorphic Spreadsheet Interpreter, certain Extreme Speed functions may return slightly different results than the corresponding Microsoft Excel function for extreme values of any input arguments. For example, this can occur with statistical and inverse distribution functions. |