ITR: Advanced Application Service Provider Technologies for Large-Scale Optimization

应用服务提供商(ASP)-通过互联网分发软件的使用，而不是软件本身-越来越被视为网络服务发展的下一个主要因素之一。这个项目将研究和测试ASP概念在一个可能会产生特别大影响的领域的应用：大规模优化软件。优化软件的复杂性和多样性给网络服务的开发带来了挑战性的障碍，但该软件的特殊多样性和模块化确保了成功的努力将在科学、教育和商业领域产生广泛影响。在技术上，该项目将建立在西北大学优化技术中心和阿贡国家实验室之前的工作基础上。一个子项目将调查无法轻松预测其需求的优化请求的资源分配。其他将涉及客户端和服务器端对象类库的设计和测试，这些对象类库在当前的数学计算中没有模型。该项目还将包括算法选择和求解器调度的自动化，方法是建立和使用一个数据库，以借鉴以往优化请求的结果和人类专家的意见。因此，该项目将用于计算大规模优化的方法、软件和系统结合在一起，目的是使该领域令人印象深刻的技术更容易为应用程序、算法开发和教育所使用。

Application Service Providers (ASPs) - which distribute the use of software, rather than the software itself, via the Internet - are increasingly coming to be seen as one of the next major elements in the development of network services. This project will study and test the application of the ASP concept in an area where it is likely to have a particularly great influence: software for large-scale optimization. The complexity and variety of optimization software present challenging obstacles to the development of network services, but the exceptional variety and modularity of this software insure that successful efforts will have a broad impact in science, education, and business.Technically, the project will build on previous work by the Optimization Technology Center of Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory. One subproject will investigate resource allocation for optimization requests whose needs cannot be easily forecast. Others will involve the design and testing of both client-side and server-side object class libraries that have no models in current mathematical computation. The project will also include the automation of algorithm choice and solver scheduling, through the construction and use of a database to learn from results of previous optimization requests and from human experts. The project thus brings together methods, software, and systems for computational large-scale optimization, with the aim of making the impressive technology in this area more accessible for applications, algorithm development, and education.