Distributed Computation using ADE

Uses the Enterprise edition and features new Analytica 4.6

In this application, we use the COM Integration feature (introduced in Analytica 4.6) to call multiple instances of ADE (Analytica Decision Engine), evaluating the same model on both the same multi-core computer and a different computer. By doing this, we are able to take advantage of both multiple cores and multiple computers to speed up the computation on a Monte Carlo simulation. We applied this to a large model developed for and used by the North West Power Council for planning future electric grid capacity. By running 16 ADE instances on 2 computers with 8 cores each, a 10-fold speed-up was measured.

The above graph shows the elapsed time required to complete the full Monte Carlo simulation as a function of the number of parallel ADE instances utilized to carry out the simulation.

This page describes how this is done. It provides an real-life example of how to call COM objects from Analytica. You may find this useful even if you are using COM to do something much different than this, or you might be motivated to use ADE in the same manner described here.