TY - GEN A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Combining NP-Hard Reduction Techniques and Strong Heuristics in an Exact Algorithm for the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem N2 - Borne out of a surprising variety of practical applications, the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem has attracted considerable interest during the past years. This interest has not only led to notable research on theoretical properties, but has also brought about several (exact) solvers-with steadily increasing performance. Continuing along this path, the following article introduces several new algorithms such as reduction techniques and heuristics and describes their integration into an exact solver. The new methods are evaluated with respect to both their theoretical and practical properties. Notably, the new exact framework allows to solve common problem instances from the literature faster than all previous approaches. Moreover, one large-scale benchmark instance from the 11th DIMACS Challenge can be solved for the first time to optimality and the primal-dual gap for two other ones can be significantly reduced. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-45 KW - maximum-weight connected subgraph Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64699 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Maher, Stephen J. T1 - Reduction Techniques for the Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree Problem and the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem JF - Networks N2 - The concept of reduction has frequently distinguished itself as a pivotal ingredient of exact solving approaches for the Steiner tree problem in graphs. In this paper we broaden the focus and consider reduction techniques for three Steiner problem variants that have been extensively discussed in the literature and entail various practical applications: The prize-collecting Steiner tree problem, the rooted prize-collecting Steiner tree problem and the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem. By introducing and subsequently deploying numerous new reduction methods, we are able to drastically decrease the size of a large number of benchmark instances, already solving more than 90 percent of them to optimality. Furthermore, we demonstrate the impact of these techniques on exact solving, using the example of the state-of-the-art Steiner problem solver SCIP-Jack. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/net.21857 VL - 73 SP - 206 EP - 233 PB - Wiley ET - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Transformations for the Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree Problem and the Maximum-Weight Connected Subgraph Problem to SAP JF - Journal of Computational Mathematics N2 - Transformations of Steiner tree problem variants have been frequently discussed in the literature. Besides allowing to easily transfer complexity results, they constitute a central pillar of exact state-of-the-art solvers for well-known variants such as the Steiner tree problem in graphs. In this paper transformations for both the prize-collecting Steiner tree problem and the maximum-weight connected subgraph problem to the Steiner arborescence problem are introduced for the first time. Furthermore, we demonstrate the considerable implications for practical solving approaches, including the computation of strong upper and lower bounds. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4208/jcm.1709-m2017-0002 VL - 36 IS - 3 SP - 459 EP - 468 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Luce, Robert A1 - Duintjer Tebbens, Jurjen A1 - Liesen, Jörg A1 - Nabben, Robert A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Schenk, Olaf T1 - On the Factorization of Simplex Basis Matrices N2 - In the simplex algorithm, solving linear systems with the basis matrix and its transpose accounts for a large part of the total computation time. We investigate various methods from modern numerical linear algebra to improve the computation speed of the basis updates arising in LPs. The experiments are executed on a large real-world test set. The most widely used solution technique is sparse LU factorization, paired with an updating scheme that allows to use the factors over several iterations. Clearly, small number of fill-in elements in the LU factors is critical for the overall performance. Using a wide range of LPs we show numerically that after a simple permutation the non-triangular part of the basis matrix is so small, that the whole matrix can be factorized with (relative) fill-in close to the optimum. This permutation has been exploited by simplex practitioners for many years. But to our knowledge no systematic numerical study has been published that demonstrates the effective reduction to a surprisingly small non-triangular problem, even for large scale LPs. For the factorization of the non-triangular part most existing simplex codes use some variant of dynamic Markowitz pivoting, which originated in the late 1950s. We also show numerically that, in terms of fill-in and in the simplex context, dynamic Markowitz is quite consistently superior to other, more recently developed techniques. T3 - ZIB-Report - 09-24 Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-11392 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Achterberg, Tobias A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Wolter, Kati T1 - Constraint Integer Programming: Techniques and Applications N2 - This article introduces constraint integer programming (CIP), which is a novel way to combine constraint programming (CP) and mixed integer programming (MIP) methodologies. CIP is a generalization of MIP that supports the notion of general constraints as in CP. This approach is supported by the CIP framework SCIP, which also integrates techniques for solving satisfiability problems. SCIP is available in source code and free for noncommercial use. We demonstrate the usefulness of CIP on three tasks. First, we apply the constraint integer programming approach to pure mixed integer programs. Computational experiments show that SCIP is almost competitive to current state-of-the-art commercial MIP solvers. Second, we demonstrate how to use CIP techniques to compute the number of optimal solutions of integer programs. Third, we employ the CIP framework to solve chip design verification problems, which involve some highly nonlinear constraint types that are very hard to handle by pure MIP solvers. The CIP approach is very effective here: it can apply the full sophisticated MIP machinery to the linear part of the problem, while dealing with the nonlinear constraints by employing constraint programming techniques. T3 - ZIB-Report - 08-43 KW - constraint programming KW - mixed integer programming KW - branch-and-cut KW - optimization software KW - chip verification Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-10950 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Shinano, Yuji T1 - SCIP-Jack - A massively parallel STP solver N2 - In this article we describe the impact from embedding a 15 year old model for solving the Steiner tree problem in graphs in a state-of-the-art MIP-Framework, making the result run in a massively parallel environment and extending the model to solve as many variants as possible. We end up with a high-perfomance solver that is capable of solving previously unsolved instances and, in contrast to its predecessor, is freely available for academic research. T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-35 KW - Steiner Tree Problem KW - Mixed-Integer Programming KW - Branch-and-Cut KW - DIMACS Challenge Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-52293 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Pfetsch, Marc ED - Jünger, Michael ED - Reinelt, Gerhard T1 - Progress in Academic Computational Integer Programming T2 - Facets of Combinatorial Optimization Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38189-8_19 SP - 483 EP - 506 PB - Springer ER - TY - GEN A1 - Arnold, Thomas A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Vigerske, Stefan A1 - Henrion, René A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Tischendorf, Caren A1 - Römisch, Werner T1 - A Jack of all Trades? Solving stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear constraint programs N2 - Natural gas is one of the most important energy sources in Germany and Europe. In recent years, political regulations have led to a strict separation of gas trading and gas transport, thereby assigning a central role in energy politics to the transportation and distribution of gas. These newly imposed political requirements influenced the technical processes of gas transport in such a way that the complex task of planning and operating gas networks has become even more intricate. Mathematically, the combination of discrete decisions on the configuration of a gas transport network, the nonlinear equations describing the physics of gas, and the uncertainty in demand and supply yield large-scale and highly complex stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems. The Matheon project "Optimization of Gas Transport" takes the key role of making available the necessary core technology to solve the mathematical optimization problems which model the topology planning and the operation of gas networks. An important aspect of the academic impact is the free availability of our framework. As a result of several years of research and development, it is now possible to download a complete state-of-the-art framework for mixed-integer linear and nonlinear programming in source code at http://scip.zib.de T3 - ZIB-Report - 14-14 KW - gas transport optimization KW - mixed integer nonlinear programming Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-49947 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Arnold, Thomas A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Vigerske, Stefan A1 - Henrion, René A1 - Grötschel, Martin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Tischendorf, Caren A1 - Römisch, Werner ED - Deuflhard, Peter ED - Grötschel, Martin ED - Hömberg, Dietmar ED - Horst, Ulrich ED - Kramer, Jürg ED - Mehrmann, Volker ED - Polthier, Konrad ED - Schmidt, Frank ED - Schütte, Christof ED - Skutella, Martin ED - Sprekels, Jürgen T1 - A Jack of all Trades? Solving stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear constraint programs T2 - MATHEON - Mathematics for Key Technologies N2 - Natural gas is one of the most important energy sources in Germany and Europe. In recent years, political regulations have led to a strict separation of gas trading and gas transport, thereby assigning a central role in energy politics to the transportation and distribution of gas. These newly imposed political requirements influenced the technical processes of gas transport in such a way that the complex task of planning and operating gas networks has become even more intricate. Mathematically, the combination of discrete decisions on the configuration of a gas transport network, the nonlinear equations describing the physics of gas, and the uncertainty in demand and supply yield large-scale and highly complex stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems. The Matheon project "Optimization of Gas Transport" takes the key role of making available the necessary core technology to solve the mathematical optimization problems which model the topology planning and the operation of gas networks. An important aspect of the academic impact is the free availability of our framework. As a result of several years of research and development, it is now possible to download a complete state-of-the-art framework for mixed-integer linear and nonlinear programming in source code at http://scip.zib.de Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4171/137 VL - 1 SP - 135 EP - 146 PB - European Mathematical Society ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cook, William A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Steffy, Daniel A1 - Wolter, Kati T1 - A hybrid branch-and-bound approach for exact rational mixed-integer programming JF - Mathematical Programming Computation N2 - We present an exact rational solver for mixed-integer linear programming that avoids the numerical inaccuracies inherent in the floating-point computations used by existing software. This allows the solver to be used for establishing theoretical results and in applications where correct solutions are critical due to legal and financial consequences. Our solver is a hybrid symbolic/numeric implementation of LP-based branch-and-bound, using numerically-safe methods for all binding computations in the search tree. Computing provably accurate solutions by dynamically choosing the fastest of several safe dual bounding methods depending on the structure of the instance, our exact solver is only moderately slower than an inexact floating-point branch-and-bound solver. The software is incorporated into the SCIP optimization framework, using the exact LP solver QSopt_ex and the GMP arithmetic library. Computational results are presented for a suite of test instances taken from the MIPLIB and Mittelmann libraries and for a new collection of numerically difficult instances. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-013-0055-6 VL - 5 IS - 3 SP - 305 EP - 344 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ralphs, Ted A1 - Shinano, Yuji A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Parallel Solvers for Mixed Integer Linear Programming N2 - In this article, we introduce parallel mixed integer linear programming (MILP) solvers. MILP solving algorithms have been improved tremendously in the last two decades. Currently, commercial MILP solvers are known as a strong optimization tool. Parallel MILP solver development has started in 1990s. However, since the improvements of solving algorithms have much impact to solve MILP problems than application of parallel computing, there were not many visible successes. With the spread of multi-core CPUs, current state-of-the-art MILP solvers have parallel implementations and researches to apply parallelism in the solving algorithm also getting popular. We summarize current existing parallel MILP solver architectures. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-74 KW - parallel computing KW - integer programming KW - branch-and-bound KW - supercomputing Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-62239 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Shinano, Yuji A1 - Achterberg, Tobias A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Heinz, Stefan A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Winkler, Michael ED - IEEE, T1 - Solving Hard MIPLIP2003 Problems with ParaSCIP on Supercomputers: An Update T2 - IPDPSW'14 Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE, International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-1-4799-4117-9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPSW.2014.174 SP - 1552 EP - 1561 PB - IEEE Computer Society CY - Washington, DC, USA ER - TY - GEN A1 - Berthold, Timo A1 - Hendel, Gregor A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - The Three Phases of MIP Solving N2 - Modern MIP solvers employ dozens of auxiliary algorithmic components to support the branch-and-bound search in finding and improving primal solutions and in strengthening the dual bound. Typically, all components are tuned to minimize the average running time to prove optimality. In this article, we take a different look at the run of a MIP solver. We argue that the solution process consists of three different phases, namely achieving feasibility, improving the incumbent solution, and proving optimality. We first show that the entire solving process can be improved by adapting the search strategy with respect to the phase-specific aims using different control tunings. Afterwards, we provide criteria to predict the transition between the individual phases and evaluate the performance impact of altering the algorithmic behavior of the MIP solver SCIP at the predicted phase transition points. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-78 KW - optimization software KW - mixed-integer programming KW - branch-and-bound KW - adaptive search behavior KW - optimality prediction Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61607 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hiller, Benjamin A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Schewe, Lars A1 - Schwarz, Robert A1 - Schweiger, Jonas T1 - A System to Evaluate Gas Network Capacities: Concepts and Implementation N2 - Since 2005, the gas market in the European Union is liberalized and the trading of natural gas is decoupled from its transport. The transport is done by so-called transmissions system operators or TSOs. The market model established by the European Union views the gas transmission network as a black box, providing shippers (gas traders and consumers) the opportunity to transport gas from any entry to any exit. TSOs are required to offer maximum independent capacities at each entry and exit such that the resulting gas flows can be realized by the network without compromising security of supply. Therefore, evaluating the available transport capacities is extremely important to the TSOs. This paper gives an overview of the toolset for evaluating gas network capacities that has been developed within the ForNe project, a joint research project of seven research partners initiated by Open Grid Europe, Germany's biggest TSO. While most of the relevant mathematics is described in the book "Evaluating Gas Network Capacities", this article sketches the system as a whole, describes some developments that have taken place recently, and gives some details about the current implementation. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-03 KW - operations research in energy KW - gas network optimization KW - entry-exit model KW - freely allocable capacity KW - large-scale mixed-integer nonlinear programming Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61931 SN - 1438-0064 N1 - A revised and extended version is available as ZIB-Report 18-11. ER -