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ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software

BiqCrunch

Nathan Krislock, Jérôme Malick, Frédéric Roupin

Published Jan 2, 2017• 49 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This article presents BiqCrunch , an exact solver for binary quadratic optimization problems. BiqCrunch is a branch-and-bound method that uses an original, efficient semidefinite-optimization-based bounding procedure. It has been successfully tested on a variety of well-known combinatorial optimization problems, such as Max-Cut, Max- k -Cluster, and Max-Independent-Set. The code is publicly available online; a web interface and many conversion tools are also provided.

DOI
10.1145/3005345

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This article presents BiqCrunch , an exact solver for binary quadratic optimization problems. BiqCrunch is a branch-and-bound method that uses an original, efficient semidefinite-optimization-based bounding procedure. It has been successfully tested on a variety of well-known combinatorial optimization problems, such as Max-Cut, Max- k -Cluster, and Max-Independent-Set. The code is publicly available online; a web interface and many conversion tools are also provided.
We present BiqBin, an exact solver for linearly constrained binary quadratic problems. Our approach is based on an exact penalty method to first efficiently transform the original problem into an instance of Max-Cut, and then to solve the Max-Cut problem by a branch-and-bound algorithm. All the main ingredients are carefully developed using new semidefinite programming relaxations obtained by strengthening the existing relaxations with a set of hypermetric inequalities, applying the bundle method as the bounding routine and using new strategies for exploring the branch-and-bound tree. Furthermore, an efficient C implementation of a sequential and a parallel branch-and-bound algorithm is presented. The latter is based on a load coordinator-worker scheme using MPI for multi-node parallelization and is evaluated on a high-performance computer. The new solver is benchmarked against BiqCrunch, GUROBI, and SCIP on four families of (linearly constrained) binary quadratic problems. Numerical results demonstrate that BiqBin is a highly competitive solver. The serial version outperforms the other three solvers on the majority of the benchmark instances. We also evaluate the parallel solver and show that it has good scaling properties. The general audience can use it as an on-line service available at http://www.biqbin.eu .
While the Maximum Cut Problem and Unconstrained Binary Quadratic Optimization are of high interest in the scientific community and gain increasing importance, state-of-the-art solvers for these problems are publicly available, yet not for sparse instances of larger scale. We present the novel solver McSparse to fill this gap. It is installed as an internet service similar to the well-known services Biq Mac and BiqCrunch. We explain details of the algorithmic innovations based on integer linear programming and polyhedral combinatorics leading to the branch-and-cut algorithm implemented in McSparse. Substantial improvements with respect to former such approaches are demonstrated and the sustained performance is compared to those of other state-of-the-art methods using a broad set of benchmark instances.
Binary programs with a quadratic objective function are NP-hard in general, even if the linear optimization problem over the same feasible set is tractable. In this paper, we address such problems by computing quadratic global underestimators of the objective function that are separable but not necessarily convex. Exploiting the binary constraint on the variables, a minimizer of the separable underestimator over the feasible set can be computed by solving an appropriate linear minimization problem over the same feasible set. Embedding the resulting lower bounds into a branch-and-bound framework, we obtain an exact algorithm for the original quadratic binary program. The main practical challenge is the fast computation of an appropriate underestimator, which in our approach reduces to solving a series of semidefinite programs. We exploit the special structure of the resulting problems to obtain a tailored coordinate-descent method for their solution. Our extensive experimental results on various quadratic combinatorial optimization problems show that our approach outperforms both CPLEX and the related QCR method as well as the SDP-based software BiqCrunch on instances of the quadratic shortest path problem and the quadratic assignment problem.
The maximum-cut problem is one of the fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization. With the advent of quantum computers, both the maximum-cut and the equivalent quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem have experienced much interest in recent years. This article aims to advance the state of the art in the exact solution of both problems -- by using mathematical programming techniques on digital computers. The main focus lies on sparse problem instances, although also dense ones can be solved. We enhance several algorithmic components such as reduction techniques and cutting-plane separation algorithms, and combine them in an exact branch-and-cut solver. Furthermore, we provide a parallel implementation. The new solver is shown to significantly outperform existing state-of-the-art software for sparse MaxCut and QUBO instances. Furthermore, we improve the best known bounds for several instances from the 7th DIMACS Challenge and the QPLIB, and solve some of them (for the first time) to optimality.
Abstract The maximum-cut problem is one of the fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization. With the advent of quantum computers, both the maximum-cut and the equivalent quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem have experienced much interest in recent years. This article aims to advance the state of the art in the exact solution of both problems—by using mathematical programming techniques. The main focus lies on sparse problem instances, although also dense ones can be solved. We enhance several algorithmic components such as reduction techniques and cutting-plane separation algorithms, and combine them in an exact branch-and-cut solver. Furthermore, we provide a parallel implementation. The new solver is shown to significantly outperform existing state-of-the-art software for sparse maximum-cut and quadratic unconstrained binary optimization instances. Furthermore, we improve the best known bounds for several instances from the 7th DIMACS Challenge and the QPLIB, and solve some of them (for the first time) to optimality.
This repository contains the source code, computational experiments, analysis, and benchmarks accompanying the paper A Direct SDP-Based Framework for Certified Bounds for Constrained Quadratic Binary Optimization Problems. The repository implements a direct semidefinite programming (SDP) approach for constrained quadratic binary optimization, designed to obtain strong bounds for exact optimization. The SDP relaxation is strengthened using quadratized linear constraints and triangle (hypermetric) inequalities. To address the numerical infeasibility of SDP solutions obtained from numerical solvers such as MOSEK, the framework includes a correction procedure that converts approximate SDP solutions into mathematically certified bounds suitable for use in Branch-and-Bound algorithms. The repository also implements an adaptation of the Goemans–Williamson randomized hyperplane rounding scheme to constrained binary optimization, together with problem-specific feasibility restoration. Computational experiments are provided for the Sparsest k-Subgraph and Maximum Independent Set problems. The work presented in this repository was funded and developed under the QBIQ project (project no. 644), funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) through the Applied Projects programme. The code and accompanying data are intended to facilitate reproducibility of the computational results and provide a foundation for further research on exact SDP-based methods for constrained quadratic binary optimization.