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arXiv:2505.20997 · neural information processing systems

BIPNN: Learning to Solve Binary Integer Programming via Hypergraph Neural Networks

Sen Bai, Chunqi Yang, Xin Wei Bai, Xin Zhang, Zhengang Jiang

Published Jan 1, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Binary (0-1) integer programming (BIP) is pivotal in scientific domains requiring discrete decision-making. As the advance of AI computing, recent works explore neural network-based solvers for integer linear programming (ILP) problems. Yet, they lack scalability for tackling nonlinear challenges. To handle nonlinearities, state-of-the-art Branch-and-Cut solvers employ linear relaxations, leading to exponential growth in auxiliary variables and severe computation limitations. To overcome these limitations, we propose BIPNN (Binary Integer Programming Neural Network), an unsupervised learning framework to solve nonlinear BIP problems via hypergraph neural networks (HyperGNN). Specifically, BIPNN reformulates BIPs-constrained, discrete, and nonlinear (sin, log, exp) optimization problems-into unconstrained, differentiable, and polynomial loss functions. The reformulation stems from the observation of a precise one-to-one mapping between polynomial BIP objectives and hypergraph structures, enabling the unsupervised training of HyperGNN to optimize BIP problems in an end-to-end manner. On this basis, we propose a GPU-accelerated and continuous-annealing-enhanced training pipeline for BIPNN. The pipeline enables BIPNN to optimize large-scale nonlinear terms in BIPs fully in parallel via straightforward gradient descent, thus significantly reducing the training cost while ensuring the generation of discrete, high-quality solutions. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets highlight the superiority of our approach.

DOI
10.52202/085713-3128

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Along with AI computing shining in scientific discovery, its potential in the combinatorial optimization (CO) domain has also emerged in recent years. Yet, existing unsupervised neural network solvers struggle to solve kkk-grouping problems (e.g., coloring, partitioning) on large-scale graphs and hypergraphs, due to limited computational frameworks. In this work, we propose Deep kkk-grouping, an unsupervised learning-based CO framework. Specifically, we contribute: Novel one-hot encoded polynomial unconstrained binary optimization (OH-PUBO), a formulation for modeling k-grouping problems on graphs and hypergraphs (e.g., graph/hypergraph coloring and partitioning); GPU-accelerated algorithms for large-scale k-grouping CO problems. Deep kkk-grouping employs the relaxation of large-scale OH-PUBO objectives as differentiable loss functions and trains to optimize them in an unsupervised manner. To ensure scalability, it leverages GPU-accelerated algorithms to unify the training pipeline; A Gini coefficient-based continuous relaxation annealing strategy to enforce discreteness of solutions while preventing convergence to local optima. Experimental results demonstrate that Deep kkk-grouping outperforms existing neural network solvers and classical heuristics such as SCIP and Tabu.
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We present a fast, scalable, data-driven approach for solving relaxations of 0-1 integer linear programs. We use a combination of graph neural networks (GNN) and a Lagrange decomposition based algorithm. We make the latter differentiable for end-to-end training and use GNNs to predict its algorithmic parameters. This allows to retain the algorithm's theoretical properties including dual feasibility and guaranteed non-decrease in the lower bound while improving it via training. We overcome suboptimal fixed points of the basic solver by additional non-parametric GNN update steps maintaining dual feasibility. For training we use an unsupervised loss. We train on smaller problems and test on larger ones showing strong generalization performance with a GNN comprising only around 10k parameters. Our solver achieves significantly faster performance and better dual objectives than its non-learned version, achieving close to optimal objective values of LP relaxations of very large structured prediction problems and on selected combinatorial ones. In particular, we achieve better objective values than specialized approximate solvers for specific problem classes while retaining their efficiency. Our solver has better any-time performance over a large time period compared to a commercial solver.
Machine learning-based optimization frameworks have attracted increasing attention for accelerating the solution of large-scale quadratically constrained quadratic programs (QCQPs) by exploiting shared problem structure across instances. However, existing machine learning (ML) frameworks often rely on the assumption of parametric models and large-scale solvers. This article introduces HEQP, a hypergraph neural network-based evolutionary optimization framework for large-scale QCQPs. This framework features two main components: 1) hypergraph-based neural prediction, which predicts optimal solutions for QCQPs without assumptions of models; and 2) evolutionary large neighborhood search (Evo-LNS), which employs a McCormick relaxation-based repair strategy to search and apply crossover on neighborhood solutions using a small-scale solver. We further show that our framework is equivalent to the interior-point method (IPM), a polynomial-time algorithm, for quadratic programming. Experiments on two types of benchmark problems and 13 large-scale real-world instances from the QPLIB illustrate that our framework outperforms state-of-the-art solvers (including Gurobi, SCIP, and SHOT) in both solution quality and time efficiency, highlighting the efficiency of ML-based optimization frameworks for QCQPs.
In recent years, there has been notable interest in investigating combinatorial optimization (CO) problems by neural-based framework. An emerging strategy to tackle these challenging problems involves the adoption of graph neural networks (GNNs) as an alternative to traditional algorithms, a subject that has attracted considerable attention. Despite the growing popularity of GNNs and traditional algorithm solvers in the realm of CO, there is limited research on their integrated use and the correlation between them within an end-to-end framework. The primary focus of our work is to formulate a more efficient and precise framework for CO by employing decision-focused learning on graphs. Additionally, we introduce a decision-focused framework that utilizes GNNs to address CO problems with auxiliary support. To realize an end-to-end approach, we have designed two cascaded modules: (a) an unsupervised trained graph predictive model, and (b) a solver for quadratic binary unconstrained optimization. Empirical evaluations are conducted on various classical tasks, including maximum cut, maximum independent set, and minimum vertex cover. The experimental results on classical CO problems (i.e. MaxCut, MIS, and MVC) demonstrate the superiority of our method over both the standalone GNN approach and classical methods.
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