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The increasing importance of mathematical programming for the solution
of complex nonlinear systems arising in practical situations requires
the development of qualified optimization software. In recent years, a
lot of effort has been made to implement efficient and reliable
optimization programs and we can observe a wide distribution of these
programs both for research and industrial applications. In spite of
their practical importance only a few attempts have been made in the
past to come to comparative conclusions and to give a designer the
possibility to decide which optimization program could solve his
individual problems in the most desirable way. Box [BO 1966J, Huang,
Levy [HL 1970J, Himmelblau [HI 1971J, Dumi- tru [DU 1974], and More,
Garbow, Hillstrom [MG 1978] for example compared algorithms for unres
ricied u illii Gtiv y le, B n [BD 1970], McKeown [MK 1975], and
Ramsin, Wedin [RW 1977l studied codes for nonlinear least squares
problems. Codes for the linear case are compared by Bartels [BA 1975.J
and Schittkowski, Stoer [SS 1979J. Extensive tests for geometric
programming algorithms are found in Dembo [DE 1976bJ, Rijckaert [RI
1977], and Rijckaert, Martens [RM 1978J.