The NEOS Server is an Internet-based client-server application that provides free access to a library of optimization solvers. Its library of solvers includes more than 60 commercial, free and open source solvers, which can be applied to

mathematical optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

problems of more than 12 different types, including

linear programming Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements and objective are represented by linear function#As a polynomia ...

integer programming An integer programming problem is a mathematical optimization or feasibility program in which some or all of the variables are restricted to be integers. In many settings the term refers to integer linear programming (ILP), in which the objective ...

and nonlinear optimization. The server is managed by the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. Most of the solvers are hosted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where jobs run on a cluster of high-performance machines managed by the HTCondor software. A smaller number of solvers are hosted by partner organizations:

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

, the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and the

University of Minho The University of Minho (''Universidade do Minho'') is a public university in Minho Province, Portugal. It is divided into the following campuses: * Largo do Paço (rectorate), in Braga * Campus of Gualtar, in Braga * Convento dos Congregados, i ...

in Portugal. The server was developed in 1996 by the Optimization Technology Center of

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...

and

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

Structure

The NEOS (Network-Enabled Optimization System) project was launched in at Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University to develop a method to share optimization software resources over the Internet. The server went live in 1996, one of the first examples of

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...

. The NEOS Server is an Internet-based client-server application that provides access to a library of optimization solvers. The server accepts optimization models described in modeling languages, programming languages, and problem-specific formats. Most of the linear programming, integer programming and nonlinear programming solvers accept input from

AMPL AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) is an algebraic modeling language to describe and solve high-complexity problems for large-scale mathematical computing (e.g. large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems). It was developed ...

and/or GAMS. Jobs can be submitted via a web page, email, XML RPC, Kestrel or indirectly via third party submission tools SolverStudio for Excel, OpenSolver,

Pyomo Pyomo is a collection of Python software packages for formulating optimization models. Pyomo was developed by William Hart and Jean-Paul Watson at Sandia National Laboratories and David Woodruff at University of California, Davis. Significan ...

, JuMP (through the Julia package NEOS) and the

R package R packages are extensions to the R statistical programming language. R packages contain code, data, and documentation in a standardised collection format that can be installed by users of R, typically via a centralised software repository such a ...

rneos. NEOS uses the HTCondor software to manage the workload on a dedicated cluster of computers.

References

{{Reflist

External links

NEOS Server
official site of the NEOS Server
NEOS Guide
official site of the NEOS Guide Mathematical optimization software