var fDesc=new Array(); fDesc[0] = "In the March 1997 issue of Scientific American, Shawn Carlson described a remarkable algorithm for tackling challenging problems, like the Travelling Salesman problem, by adopting the approach "Nature uses" when a metal anneals or when a crystal forms. The algorithm is called "simulated annealing" and was implemented in C.

EuroSoft converted the C code to Visual Basic and provided an easy-to-use visual interface which makes it extremely straightforward to solve the Travelling Salesman's problem for visiting anything from 10 to 3000 arbitrary cities, the location of each city being specified by its x- and y- co-ordinates.

New Zealander Tony Cooper took the version developed by EuroSoft and enhanced it as follows:

- A graphical interface was added to allow the interactive plotting of points (left-click to place a point at the cursor) and to allow the progress of convergence to be viewed visually. This second capability provides dramatic visual evidence of the effectiveness of the simulated annealing algorithm.

- A C-based dynamic linked library (Carlson.dll) was developed for the algorithm to significantly improve running times. For example, on an Intel Core Quad Q6600 based system, a 1000-point problem takes around 6 seconds, and a 2000-point problem around 17 seconds."; function tShowHide(id, show) { var s = document.getElementById("desc"); if ((s.innerHTML.length<=212 || show==1) && show!=2) { s.innerHTML = fDesc[id]; if (document.getElementById('m1')) document.getElementById('m1').style.display='none'; if (document.getElementById('m2')) document.getElementById('m2').style.display='none'; if (document.getElementById('more_txt')) document.getElementById('more_txt').style.display='inline'; } else { s.innerHTML = ''; } }