Oxford-based software house and consultancy Risk Decisions Ltd is championing the use of parallel processing for business applications. The key to the widespread success of this venture depends on the market price of supercomputers coming down. In the meantime Risk has been developing the scope of the spreadsheet. It has come up with a decision […]
Oxford-based software house and consultancy Risk Decisions Ltd is championing the use of parallel processing for business applications. The key to the widespread success of this venture depends on the market price of supercomputers coming down. In the meantime Risk has been developing the scope of the spreadsheet. It has come up with a decision support tool to look at the future consequences of actions taken now. This product, called Predict, is a spreadsheet enhanced with the Monte Carlo modelling system to turn it into a forecasting system dealing with probability. Monte Carlo works in a similar way to that traditional school mathematics probability scenario where coins are tossed to produce statistics. Being something of a natural populariser, Lewis Foto, Risk’s director, is at pains to point out that there is nothing mysterious and difficult about either Predict or parallel processing. The Monte Carlo system uses distributed cells to combine values with formulae via spreadsheets. The spreadsheet can be run a thousand times and a history of results then forms the basis for the range of variables to be given. Of course as with all variables the quality of the prediction will depend on the quality of the input variable. The single Transputer personal computer-hosted version of Predict has been available since February 1987, priced at UKP2,440, and has been used by the Post Office for capital budgeting, resulting in a 20% increase in value for money over 850 projects. The Department of Trade & Industry has also bought 40 units of Predict. However, the really interesting product, the multi-Transputer version will not be on general release until the last quarter of this year. It is currently being beta-tested in-house with run versions out in a couple of weeks. This product, which has been developed with collaboration from Meiko and Sun Microsystems, will be able to exploit any number of Transputers, running Predict continuosly, and taking into account runtime factors. All in all it looks set to be an incredibly powerful risk assessment tool, giving, in Foto’s words, PhD capability in everyday decisions.
