Many people now have multi-core machines on their desktop - dual-core, quad-core, and so on. The highest-end desktop machines have 8 or even 16 cores, but even standard desktops now have more than one processor.

So how can you take advantage of that? If you run an Excel-based program (like we do), you’re still stuck with what Excel can do. Excel 2007 and 2010 can run multithreaded, which is pretty good, but even that doesn’t really take advantage of all the processing power you have available.

If you have multiple cores, we have an answer for you: RiskAMP CorePerformance. CorePerformance is a native multi-core version of RiskAMP which can run faster - sometimes, a lot faster - on your desktop.

If you have a simulation that takes minutes (hours!) to run, and you have a multi-core desktop, you might be able to take advantage of CorePerformance. It runs faster.

CorePerformance hasn’t been released yet. We’re looking for interested people who would be willing to beta-test the program. If you’d like to try it, please understand that beta software sometimes breaks, or acts abnormally. You should save your work often just in case. But still, it runs faster.

If you’re interested in beta-testing CorePerformance, and seeing how fast your models can run, please send us an email at info@riskamp.com, and we’ll be in touch with more information.

Here’s our press release describing the new version of RiskAMP CS for High-Performance Computing:

This week Microsoft is releasing the latest version of their High-Performance Computing platform, Windows HPC Server 2008 R2. High-Performance Computing refers to clustering: using a large number of machines, in parallel, to run computation tasks.

For an overview of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 and what it can do for you, check out the Microsoft HPC site. If you need some help or are looking for specific implementation solutions, check out the list of HPC applications and partners.

RiskAMP CS is a version of the RiskAMP simulation software specifically designed to run on compute clusters. To coincide with Microsoft’s new platform release, we’re releasing a new version of RiskAMP CS specifically targeting Windows HPC Server 2008 R2.

Do I need clustering software?

Whether you need to use High-Performance Computing (clustering) depends on how much computation work you need to do, and how fast you need to do it. RiskAMP CS is designed for really complex simulations - those which take 15 minutes, an hour, or more to run. With RiskAMP CS and a Windows HPC cluster, simulations that run in an hour on the desktop can run in just a few minutes.

But if your simulations run in 30 seconds, or 2 minutes, you probably don’t need to run on the cluster. Have a look at the simulations you run and how long they take to make a decision.

Even if your simulations are fast enough today, are you modeling all the data you want? Sometimes we design simulations specifically to run in a short time, but in doing so we run fewer trials or include fewer data points. If you’d like to run more data, or more trials, but you’re concerned about execution time, running on the cluster may be a good solution.

What kind of performance can I expect?

10 times faster, just as a baseline. Actually the real performance benefits of running on the cluster are very dependent on the particular model, the resources you have in your cluster (the number of computers), and some other factors. In some cases, we’ve gotten performance that’s 100x faster than the desktop. In other cases, performance is just 5 or 6 times faster. The only way to know for sure is to try it. If we can’t get you performance that’s at least 10x faster than the desktop, we won’t sell you the RiskAMP CS software.

How can I get started?

If you’re interested in trying out RiskAMP CS for yourself, on your models, just send us a note at info@riskamp.com. If you already have a compute cluster set up, or if this is the first time you’ve heard about clustering, we can probably set up a test environment for you and see what kind of performance you can expect.

In the last few days Microsoft has released the latest version of Office and Excel, Office 2010. We’ve been working with beta versions of the program for a few months now, and it’s a great step forward. Excel 2010 smooths out the ribbon interface introduced in Excel 2007, it adds a bunch of new features, and it’s faster and more stable.

The latest versions of RiskAMP all fully support Office 2010, including both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Excel. We’re really pleased at the performance and the integration with the latest versions of Office, so if you have Excel 2010, download a trial version of RiskAMP to see for yourself.

The 64-bit version of Office adds some performance improvements and - more importantly for Excel - adds precision to calculations. All the core features of RiskAMP are written in native code (C and C++) for performance, so the 64-bit version is compiled specifically to support 64-bit Excel. That means we can take full advantage of the precision and speed of 64-bit Excel.

Not everyone moves to the latest version immediately, so not to worry: RiskAMP still fully supports versions of Excel going back to Excel 2000, including Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007. If you’ve purchased Excel in the last 10 years, you can use RiskAMP to build your probability simulation and stochastic models.

RiskAMP3, the third version of our desktop probability simulation software, adds a number of new features and performance improvements. In this post we’ll discuss some of the new user interface functions, called RiskAMP Tools.

There’s no need to install a separate package to get the tools features. These are included with the standard RiskAMP install package - for both the Personal Edition and the Professional Edition - and installed by default. The tools are available via the right-click context menu and (in Excel 2007) the Excel ribbon interface.

So let’s get started! Here are a couple of the great new Tools features in RiskAMP3:

RiskAMP is based in Excel, and all of our functions - including random distributions - work like normal Excel functions. To create a random distribution, you just enter a value in a cell.

But that doesn’t work for everyone. A lot of people like visual feedback, and seeing the distribution in front of you can make selecting the appropriate parameters much easier. To support that, we’ve added a new feature which lets you visually select, design, and insert random distributions in your spreadsheet. You can also use the designer to edit existing distributions.

The visual distribution designer

We’ve always provided a wizard for creating charts and graphs of your simulation data. Excel has great built-in charting tools, and we take advantage of those by creating tables and then generating histograms and interval charts. You can also create your own tables and charts using normal Excel techniques.

But sometimes you want a quick chart and you don’t want to go through the process of building a table to analyze the data. Our new QuickCharts feature lets you do that quickly and easily - in most cases, with just one or two clicks.

QuickChart in Excel

QuickCharts show you a histogram of your data, for any cell in the spreadsheet, just by clicking on the Excel ribbon. (If you haven’t collected data for the cell, you can run another simulation right from the QuickCharts window and display it immediately).

Even better, you can embed a QuickChart in your spreadsheet and it will update every time you run a simulation. That makes QuickCharts a great solution for quickly and easily visualizing results. QuickCharts are stored in the spreadsheet as simple images, meaning if you distribute your spreadsheet to someone else - someone who doesn’t have the add-in installed - they’ll see the chart just as you see it.

(Don’t like the colors? They’re fully customizable.)

QuickChart with custom colors and fonts

Correlation View is another chart, this time for looking at correlation between any two cells in your spreadsheet. Correlation View shows a scatter plot of correlation, along with the coefficient. It’s quick and easy to use, and - like our QuickCharts - can be embedded in your spreadsheet with just one more click.

Correlation View

There’s never been a good way to represent correlation, without generating a giant Excel table. Correlation View solves this problem simply and easily.

One of the most popular - and most complicated - distributions we provide is “MultiVariateNormal”. MultiVariateNormal (or MVN) lets you build a set of intercorrelated values for modeling markets, sectors, or correlated assets. It’s a really powerful tool, and it’s very important for modeling complex data.

The most complicated part of building an MVN distribution is designing the correlation matrix. The correlation matrix represents the intercorrelations between the various assets, classes, or markets.

To make the math work, the correlation matrix has to be “positive-definite”. That’s easy in theory, but if you’re using imprecise data collected from various sources, it can be hard to get the matrix right.

The new matrix normalization feature can adjust a correlation matrix automatically, making it positive-definite with a few small changes, so your data can support generating a multivariate distribution.

Matrix normalization is available with a single click from the Excel ribbon, it’s completely reversible, and it will tell you the error level in your matrix.

Those are the new Tools features in RiskAMP3. We’re really excited about these new features and how they make it easy to design, build, and work with your simulation models. If you haven’t already tried out RiskAMP3, it’s available for immediate download on our website. Get started today!

We’re pleased to announce the latest version of our Monte Carlo engine software - RiskAMP3. Version 3 includes a number of great new features which make it faster, easier to use, and better than ever.

We’ll walk through some of the specifics of these features in later posts, but here’s a quick overview:

• Faster

Faster run times overall, up to 20% faster than RiskAMP version 2.

• “QuickCharts”

An easy way to visualize histograms for any cell in your spreadsheet with just one click.

• Correlation View

The one basic chart type missing from Excel is a correlation scatterplot. The new correlation view, based on our QuickCharts, makes it easy to display correlation for any two cells in your spreadsheet with just a few clicks.

• Visual Distributions

Insert random distributions with a point-and-click interface for the most popular random distributions, including Normal, Beta, PERT, and triangular

• Simplified VBA integration

A simpler (and easier) VBA interface makes it faster and more efficient to script your simulations from VBA macros

In addition to that, more functions have been moved to the Personal Edition (including the PERT distribution), which makes the Personal Edition a great choice if you’re just getting started or if you don’t need the full power of our Professional Edition.

RiskAMP3 takes all the power of our desktop software and adds a number of performance improvements and user interface features which make it easier, faster, and more efficient. RiskAMP has always been the best value in probability simulation, and now it’s better than ever.

RiskAMP3 is available for immediate download, in both Personal and Professional Editions. Get started today!

We’re pleased to announce an update to the RiskAMP Add-in: Version 2.97 is a service release that includes some stability and performance improvements, and an update for numerical precision.

The update fixes a precision error that affects some users when using the beta distribution in Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS). This update only affects users of the Professional Edition. We encourage all users to download the update.

Stability and performance improvements resolve a potential crash error when opening files created with Excel 2000 in Excel 2007, and increase simulation speed when running large spreadsheet models.

The next update to the RiskAMP Tools package includes two more functions: Quick View, which shows a histogram of the distribution for a given cell; and Correlation, which shows the correlation between any two cells.

Quick View and Correlation

There’s a unified context menu to clean up the interface:

RiskAMP Tools context menu

To install the Tools package, download the installer:

RiskAMPTools.exe (550k)

If you’ve installed an earlier release of the RiskAMP Tools package, please remove that first. You can remove it from Add/Remove program in the Control Panel.

Please let us know what you think! Send any comments or questions to info@riskamp.com.

RiskAMP CS is a new product that takes probability simulation to new levels of performance and efficiency. Designed for Windows HPC Server 2008, it moves simulations off the desktop and onto the server for true High Performance.

Better Productivity:

RiskAMP CS frees up your desktop to keep working while the cluster handles intensive calculations.

Faster Decision-making:

The faster you get results, the better informed you’ll be in making time-sensitive decisions.

Greater Certainty:

With RiskAMP CS you can run larger and more complex simulations in less time.

RiskAMP CS: All the features of RiskAMP with the power of High Performance Computing.

For more information, visit our RiskAMP CS page.

The RiskAMP add-in is powerful, but it’s not always so easy to use. We’ve been working hard on that, and we’re getting ready to release a new set of tools that will make it easier than ever to build complex probability models.

Before that release, we’d like to invite you to try out an early version of some of the new tools. This pre-release will work with recent versions of the RiskAMP Professional Edition.

This release of the RiskAMP Tools adds a context menu to Excel. When you right-click on a cell, you’ll have the new option to insert a random distribution function. Click on this menu item, and you’ll see the new distribution selection box:

From here, you’ll be able to easily select from a few distributions, and see exactly what you’re going to get. You can compare the Beta-PERT and triangular distributions, for example, or see the effect of limiting a normal distribution.

We’re excited about these new tools and we’re happy to share them with you. But please understand, this is a pre-release, and there may still be a few bugs. If you do try the RiskAMP Tools package, send us a note at info@riskamp.com and tell us what you think.

Download the RiskAMP Tools Pre-release (exe file, 600k)

If you’d like to try it out, you should have a recent version of the Professional Version installed. The tools package works with Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. To remove the tools add-in, use Add/Remove programs from the Control Panel.

Recently we released an update that supported running Excel’s Goalseek function within a Monte Carlo simulation. This proved very useful but led to the obvious question: how to optimize the result of a simulation - which isn’t possible using Goalseek.

It is possible to do this using some VBA code, but it’s not as easy to use as Goalseek. To make it easier to run this kind of analysis, we’ve put together a simple point-and-click linear optimizer for running simulations. The package and a more complete description are available from our library page:

Optimizing Simulation Variables

This is an early release and may contain some bugs. Please save your work before installing or running the optimizer! If you have any comments or questions about the optimizer, please let us know.

We’re pleased to announce the release of the most recent version of the RiskAMP Add-in, version 2.83. Updates are available for both the Personal Edition and the Professional Edition on our download page.

The most recent updates to the add-in include a number of performance improvements, which should speed up slow simulations, particularly on Excel 2007 and Vista. We recommend upgrading if you’re using Excel 2000/2003 or Windows XP as well.

When you have a known or desired result in a spreadsheet, but you don’t know the input values, Excel’s built-in Goalseek function can be very helpful in providing or reaching a solution. This can be true in both a flat spreadsheet and in a probability simulation.

The latest version of the RiskAMP Add-in has been updated so it’s now possible to use Goalseek within a simulation. To try it out, you should make sure you have the most recent version of the Add-in installed (version 2.80); you can download updates from our download page.

Using Goalseek within a simulation requires VBA, so you will need to know something about VBA programming. For the most part, this is fairly simple, and actually scripting Goalseek to run is fairly simple if you record a macro.

We’ve posted a very simple example of using Goalseek and a Monte Carlo simulation on our library page:

Excel 2000/2003 Version (.xls)
Excel 2007 Version (.xlsm)

You should download the file that matches your version of Excel.

This spreadsheet runs a Monte Carlo simulation from VBA, and at each iteration it runs Goalseek to solve a simple problem on the spreadsheet. To run the simulation, we use the RiskAMP VBA library (described here). At each iteration, the code runs Goalseek using this code:

Range(”D16″).GoalSeek Goal:=0, ChangingCell:=Range(”C16″)

To figure out that line, we simply recorded a macro and ran Goalseek manually. Using this technique it’s possible to run Goalseek on a spreadsheet and capture the results from a simulation like any other spreadsheet value.

To generate random values for use in a simulation, we use a version of the Mersenne Twister algorithm. This random number generator (technically a pseudo-random number generator, or PRNG) is particularly well-suited to running Monte Carlo simulations as it has a very long period, and it’s far superior to the random number function built into Excel.

Having a good random number generator can be useful outside of running simulations, however, so we’re happy to provide a simple plug-in that adds this function to Excel. The MTRand add-in adds a single function, MTRand(), which generates a random value.

MTRand Add-in Page

We’re providing the MTRand add-in free of charge, and the source code is available for use or modification. You’re welcome to use the add-in and source code for any purpose, subject to the license terms noted on the page.

We’re proud to announce the release of our update version 2.70, and the our new product version structure. Starting immediately, we’ll be offering a Personal & Learning Edition of our product that offers our powerful Monte Carlo simulation engine at a low price for academic and small business users. The Personal Edition is powerful enough for most business tasks and analysis applications.

Our Professional Edition has added performance and features for power users and large enterprises, including integrated Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) and the PERT distribution for modeling expert data.

Maintaining multiple versions means we can continue to provide leading analytics software at a low price, while supporting the needs of power users. Check out the features in each version to figure out which version is right for you.

Trial versions of both the Personal and Professional Edition are available on our downloads page, and our sample spreadsheets work with both versions of the add-in.

The latest update to the RiskAMP Add-in is a roll-up of several new features and bug fixes. This release includes

• The SimulationTime() function, which can be used to measure simulation running time
• A fix for an error in which Excel 2007 was not detected correctly
• Fixes for two bugs which could cause excel to crash in extreme situations

In addition, this update includes performance improvements for both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. We recommend that users update at their convenience. The latest version can be downloaded from our website at

http://www.riskamp.com/download.php