An overall speed-up of GeneHunter operations has been achieved in this release by utilizing the Excel calculation facilities more efficiently. The speed increase ranges from 50% up to 4-fold increase depending on the type of chromosomes and complexity of the problem. The most significant speed-up is achieved for problems using enumerated chromosomes.

Use Single Worksheets to Speed Processing

Additional research since release 1.0 has shown that the speed of GeneHunter operation in Excel is slower for increasing numbers of formulas in the workbook. If the user's workbook consists of multiple independent worksheets, each of which has a large number of formulas, then it is advisable to move or copy the worksheet of interest with GeneHunter's problem into a separate workbook and make this worksheet the only one in that workbook.

The problem occurs because Microsoft Excel checks the whole workbook to see what needs to be recalculated. GeneHunter causes frequent recalculations, so processing is slower if your GeneHunter worksheet is located in a workbook with many other worksheets.