71,261 research outputs found
A branch-and-bound methodology within algebraic modelling systems
Through the use of application-specific branch-and-bound directives it is possible to find solutions to combinatorial models that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to find by just using generic branch-and-bound techniques within the framework of mathematical programming. {\sc Minto} is an example of a system which offers the possibility to incorporate user-provided directives (written in {\sc C}) to guide the branch-and-bound search. Its main focus, however, remains on mathematical programming models. The aim of this paper is to present a branch-and-bound methodology for particular combinatorial structures to be embedded inside an algebraic modelling language. One advantage is the increased scope of application. Another advantage is that directives are more easily implemented at the modelling level than at the programming level
Anytime coalition structure generation on synergy graphs
We consider the coalition structure generation (CSG) problem on synergy graphs, which arises in many practical applications where communication constraints, social or trust relationships must be taken into account when forming coalitions. We propose a novel representation of this problem based on the concept of edge contraction, and an innovative branch and bound approach (CFSS), which is particularly efficient when applied to a general class of characteristic functions. This new model provides a non-redundant partition of the search space, hence allowing an effective parallelisation. We evaluate CFSS on two benchmark functions, the edge sum with coordination cost and the collective energy purchasing functions, comparing its performance with the best algorithm for CSG on synergy graphs: DyCE. The latter approach is centralised and cannot be efficiently parallelised due to the exponential memory requirements in the number of agents, which limits its scalability (while CFSS memory requirements are only polynomial). Our results show that, when the graphs are very sparse, CFSS is 4 orders of magnitude faster than DyCE. Moreover, CFSS is the first approach to provide anytime approximate solutions with quality guarantees for very large systems (i.e., with more than 2700 agents
Parallel machine scheduling with precedence constraints and setup times
This paper presents different methods for solving parallel machine scheduling
problems with precedence constraints and setup times between the jobs. Limited
discrepancy search methods mixed with local search principles, dominance
conditions and specific lower bounds are proposed. The proposed methods are
evaluated on a set of randomly generated instances and compared with previous
results from the literature and those obtained with an efficient commercial
solver. We conclude that our propositions are quite competitive and our results
even outperform other approaches in most cases
Configurable Strategies for Work-stealing
Work-stealing systems are typically oblivious to the nature of the tasks they
are scheduling. For instance, they do not know or take into account how long a
task will take to execute or how many subtasks it will spawn. Moreover, the
actual task execution order is typically determined by the underlying task
storage data structure, and cannot be changed. There are thus possibilities for
optimizing task parallel executions by providing information on specific tasks
and their preferred execution order to the scheduling system.
We introduce scheduling strategies to enable applications to dynamically
provide hints to the task-scheduling system on the nature of specific tasks.
Scheduling strategies can be used to independently control both local task
execution order as well as steal order. In contrast to conventional scheduling
policies that are normally global in scope, strategies allow the scheduler to
apply optimizations on individual tasks. This flexibility greatly improves
composability as it allows the scheduler to apply different, specific
scheduling choices for different parts of applications simultaneously. We
present a number of benchmarks that highlight diverse, beneficial effects that
can be achieved with scheduling strategies. Some benchmarks (branch-and-bound,
single-source shortest path) show that prioritization of tasks can reduce the
total amount of work compared to standard work-stealing execution order. For
other benchmarks (triangle strip generation) qualitatively better results can
be achieved in shorter time. Other optimizations, such as dynamic merging of
tasks or stealing of half the work, instead of half the tasks, are also shown
to improve performance. Composability is demonstrated by examples that combine
different strategies, both within the same kernel (prefix sum) as well as when
scheduling multiple kernels (prefix sum and unbalanced tree search)
Tactical fixed job scheduling with spread-time constraints
We address the tactical fixed job scheduling problem with spread-time constraints.
In such a problem, there are a fixed number of classes of machines and a fixed number of groups of jobs. Jobs of the same group can only be processed by machines of a given set of classes. All jobs have their fixed
start and end times. Each machine is associated with a cost according to its machine class. Machines have spread-time constraints, with which each machine
is only available for L consecutive time units from the start time of the earliest job assigned to it. The objective is to minimize the total cost of the machines used to process all the jobs. For this strongly NP-hard problem, we develop a branch-and-price algorithm, which solves instances with up to 300 jobs, as compared with CPLEX, which cannot solve instances of 100 jobs.
We further investigate the influence of machine flexibility by computational experiments. Our results show that limited machine flexibility is sufficient in most situations
A Cycle-Based Formulation and Valid Inequalities for DC Power Transmission Problems with Switching
It is well-known that optimizing network topology by switching on and off
transmission lines improves the efficiency of power delivery in electrical
networks. In fact, the USA Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Section 1223) states that
the U.S. should "encourage, as appropriate, the deployment of advanced
transmission technologies" including "optimized transmission line
configurations". As such, many authors have studied the problem of determining
an optimal set of transmission lines to switch off to minimize the cost of
meeting a given power demand under the direct current (DC) model of power flow.
This problem is known in the literature as the Direct-Current Optimal
Transmission Switching Problem (DC-OTS). Most research on DC-OTS has focused on
heuristic algorithms for generating quality solutions or on the application of
DC-OTS to crucial operational and strategic problems such as contingency
correction, real-time dispatch, and transmission expansion. The mathematical
theory of the DC-OTS problem is less well-developed. In this work, we formally
establish that DC-OTS is NP-Hard, even if the power network is a
series-parallel graph with at most one load/demand pair. Inspired by Kirchoff's
Voltage Law, we give a cycle-based formulation for DC-OTS, and we use the new
formulation to build a cycle-induced relaxation. We characterize the convex
hull of the cycle-induced relaxation, and the characterization provides strong
valid inequalities that can be used in a cutting-plane approach to solve the
DC-OTS. We give details of a practical implementation, and we show promising
computational results on standard benchmark instances
A Decomposition Approach to Multi-Vehicle Cooperative Control
We present methods that generate cooperative strategies for multi-vehicle
control problems using a decomposition approach. By introducing a set of tasks
to be completed by the team of vehicles and a task execution method for each
vehicle, we decomposed the problem into a combinatorial component and a
continuous component. The continuous component of the problem is captured by
task execution, and the combinatorial component is captured by task assignment.
In this paper, we present a solver for task assignment that generates
near-optimal assignments quickly and can be used in real-time applications. To
motivate our methods, we apply them to an adversarial game between two teams of
vehicles. One team is governed by simple rules and the other by our algorithms.
In our study of this game we found phase transitions, showing that the task
assignment problem is most difficult to solve when the capabilities of the
adversaries are comparable. Finally, we implement our algorithms in a
multi-level architecture with a variable replanning rate at each level to
provide feedback on a dynamically changing and uncertain environment.Comment: 36 pages, 19 figures, for associated web page see
http://control.mae.cornell.edu/earl/decom
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