DAMO Academy's "Mindie" Solver Wins Energy Electronics Industry Innovation Competition Again, Leading a New Height in China's Industrial Software Development

DAMO Academy's "Mindie" Solver Wins Energy Electronics Industry Innovation Competition Again, Leading a New Height in China's Industrial Software DevelopmentRecently, at the second Energy Electronics Industry Innovation Competition organized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Industrial Development Promotion Center, Alibaba's DAMO Academy's independently developed "Mindie" solver once again won the championship in the "Domestic Solver Technology Special Competition." This achievement follows its recent selection as a typical application case in the MIIT's "Artificial Intelligence Empowering New Industrialization" initiative

DAMO Academy's "Mindie" Solver Wins Energy Electronics Industry Innovation Competition Again, Leading a New Height in China's Industrial Software Development

Recently, at the second Energy Electronics Industry Innovation Competition organized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Industrial Development Promotion Center, Alibaba's DAMO Academy's independently developed "Mindie" solver once again won the championship in the "Domestic Solver Technology Special Competition." This achievement follows its recent selection as a typical application case in the MIIT's "Artificial Intelligence Empowering New Industrialization" initiative. This success marks a significant breakthrough for China in the field of industrial software and showcases the "Mindie" solver's outstanding performance in solving complex industrial problems.

The "Mindie" solver is not an overnight success but the culmination of four years of dedicated research by DAMO Academy's Decision Intelligence Lab. As a full-capability solver, it can efficiently solve complex problems in key areas such as power dispatching, flight scheduling, high-end manufacturing, and computing resource management within minutes or even milliseconds. Its performance has reached the international leading level, signifying that China has taken a leading position in solver technology.

In this Energy Electronics Industry Innovation Competition, the "Mindie" solver faced unprecedented challenges. The competition scaled the computational problem to power dispatching involving thousands of generating units and introduced energy storage dispatch to facilitate new energy consumption, making the competition closer to the actual operation scenarios of new power systems. This placed extremely high demands on the solver's algorithm efficiency and stability. Traditional solvers often struggle to achieve efficient solutions in such complex scenarios, but the "Mindie" solver excelled by leveraging its powerful algorithms and parallel computing capabilities.

Wang Mengchang, a senior algorithm expert at DAMO Academy, stated that the "Mindie" solver continued its advantage in large-scale mixed-integer programming problems in the energy electronics field. To further enhance solving efficiency, "Mindie" cleverly utilizes the deep learning technology Learn2Configure. Learn2Configure automatically configures high-quality solver hyperparameters, thereby increasing solving efficiency by 1.5 times. This demonstrates the "Mindie" solver's innovation and advancement in algorithm design. It not only solves large-scale complex problems but also continuously optimizes its performance through self-learning, which is undoubtedly an important direction for future solver development.

Furthermore, the "Mindie" solver is based on DAMO Academy's self-developed distributed framework, DistRun, supporting the dispatch of unit computing tasks to thousands of machines. This rapid algorithm improvement mechanism based on cloud-based parallel testing significantly shortens the algorithm iteration cycle and improves algorithm improvement efficiency. This design fully considers the characteristics of modern computing environments and utilizes cloud computing resources to maximize solution performance.

The "Mindie" solver is not merely confined to theoretical research; it has been successfully applied in numerous real-world projects, achieving significant economic and social benefits. For example, DAMO Academy has collaborated with the China Southern Power Grid Power Dispatching and Control Center to release the "Power Dispatching Intelligent Decision-Making Platform," helping Southern Grid achieve a speed increase in dispatching from 15 minutes to seconds, with accuracy comparable to experienced dispatchers. This significantly improves the efficiency of the power system and ensures its safe and stable operation, making a significant contribution to the country's economic development.

Another successful application case is the National Energy Investment Group's "Tianshu No. 1" smart energy Internet of Things platform. The "Mindie" solver built China's first optimization solution subsystem for industrial and commercial energy storage on this platform. Faced with an ultra-large-scale optimization problem involving nearly 30,000 decision variables and hundreds of millions of constraints, the "Mindie" solver compressed the solution time for charging and discharging strategies from hours to minutes, increasing the factory's overall revenue by up to 30%. This fully demonstrates the "Mindie" solver's powerful ability to solve real-world industrial problems and its significant economic benefits.

The success of the "Mindie" solver is inseparable from the continuous efforts of DAMO Academy's Decision Intelligence Lab since 2019. The 1.0 version released in 2023 already demonstrated its powerful performance, topping the linear optimization performance in several international authoritative evaluation rankings. The recently released 2.0 version further enhances this by adding support for Non-Linear Programming (NLP) and Mixed Integer Quadratic Conic Programming (MIQCP) models, greatly expanding its application scope to meet the optimization solution needs of more industries. This reflects DAMO Academy's commitment to continuous innovation and performance improvement of the "Mindie" solver.

The "Mindie" solver innovatively introduces various cutting-edge AI technologies and parallel computing capabilities for acceleration, creating an innovative technical route of "AI + optimization solution." This is a novel technological approach that combines advanced AI algorithms with efficient parallel computing technology to significantly improve solver performance. The success of this technical route points the way for future solver technology development.

Against the backdrop of energy green transformation, the application of the "Mindie" solver in power dispatching and energy storage optimization has made important contributions to achieving sustainable development goals. In the future, DAMO Academy will continue to promote the widespread application of the "Mindie" solver in more fields such as smart logistics, low-altitude economy, new energy, and new materials, further empowering industrial upgrading and high-quality development, and enhancing the international competitiveness of Chinese industrial software. The success of the "Mindie" solver is not only a source of pride for DAMO Academy but also a milestone in the development of Chinese industrial software, signifying that China possesses the ability to compete with international advanced levels in high-performance computing.

The application of the "Mindie" solver in power dispatching solves the problems of low efficiency, slow response, and insufficient optimization in traditional power dispatching systems, providing strong technical support for the construction of new power systems. In flight scheduling, the "Mindie" solver can optimize flight takeoff and landing times based on actual conditions, improving airport operational efficiency and reducing delays. In high-end manufacturing, the "Mindie" solver can optimize production processes, improve production efficiency, and reduce production costs. In computing resource management, the "Mindie" solver can optimize resource allocation, improve resource utilization, and reduce resource waste.

The success of the "Mindie" solver is inseparable from DAMO Academy's emphasis on fundamental research and talent cultivation. DAMO Academy has a strong R&D team with rich experience and profound technical accumulation in the field of solvers. At the same time, DAMO Academy actively collaborates with universities and research institutions to jointly promote the innovative development of solver technology. The success of the "Mindie" solver also provides a reference and inspiration for other Chinese companies, encouraging more companies to invest in the R&D of industrial software and jointly promote the development of Chinese industrial software.

The "Mindie" solver not only solves complex optimization problems but also boasts good scalability and maintainability. This allows it to adapt to the needs of different industries and scenarios, enabling widespread application. In the future, the "Mindie" solver will continue to develop, constantly improving its functions and expanding its application areas, becoming a leading product in Chinese industrial software. The "Mindie" solver is leading China's industrial software onto the world stage.

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