Technical Requirements (Outdated) #

To run Mirage implies to have access to the GTAP database as well as GAMS, Excel (including Visual Basic) and SAS, the latter being used to compute tariff scenarios with MAcMap. Mirage is not demanding in terms of Hard Drive capacity. However, it is more demanding in terms of RAM: 1 Go is a minimum, while 2 to 4 Go are preferable. By default, MIRAGE is solved using conopt3 as a cns solver. Other cns solvers should also work, although path seems to be slower than conopt3. With small changes, MIRAGE can also be solved with a nlp or a mcp solver. Aggregation of GTAP data and results extraction are done with Excel VBA macros.

Standard solution for a full use of Mirage:

Hardware:

• RAM 2 Go.

Software:

• GTAP database,
• GAMS with cns, mcp or nlp solver licensee.
• Excel
• SAS (for MAcMap users)

MAcMap technical requirements #

People wanting to use MAcMap protection data instead of GTAP’s ones need to use SAS. To be able to take full advantage of the benefits of the new version of MAcMap (soon to be released), a minimum amount of disk space is required, that can be evaluated at 300 Go. MAcMapHS6-v1 is less demanding (100 Go are enough) as it is limited to tariff lines for which there is a weight (that is: import by the reference group of the country applying the tariff), but this does not allow properly computing scenarios with specific formulas for a given number of tariff lines (typically: sensitive products). Therefore, all tariff lines have been kept in the new version of MAcMap: MAcMapHS6-v2. More disk space than 300 Go will allow running several projects simultaneously and keep the temporary files for later use. It will also allow more flexibility in the way scenarios are computed. Nota Bene: a 3.5 inch (for desktop) 500 Go hard drive costs less than 100 €.