3,520 research outputs found
COCO: Performance Assessment
We present an any-time performance assessment for benchmarking numerical
optimization algorithms in a black-box scenario, applied within the COCO
benchmarking platform. The performance assessment is based on runtimes measured
in number of objective function evaluations to reach one or several quality
indicator target values. We argue that runtime is the only available measure
with a generic, meaningful, and quantitative interpretation. We discuss the
choice of the target values, runlength-based targets, and the aggregation of
results by using simulated restarts, averages, and empirical distribution
functions
Experimental Comparisons of Derivative Free Optimization Algorithms
In this paper, the performances of the quasi-Newton BFGS algorithm, the
NEWUOA derivative free optimizer, the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution
Strategy (CMA-ES), the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm and Particle Swarm
Optimizers (PSO) are compared experimentally on benchmark functions reflecting
important challenges encountered in real-world optimization problems.
Dependence of the performances in the conditioning of the problem and
rotational invariance of the algorithms are in particular investigated.Comment: 8th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms, Dortmund :
Germany (2009
Adiabatic Quantum Computing for Random Satisfiability Problems
The discrete formulation of adiabatic quantum computing is compared with
other search methods, classical and quantum, for random satisfiability (SAT)
problems. With the number of steps growing only as the cube of the number of
variables, the adiabatic method gives solution probabilities close to 1 for
problem sizes feasible to evaluate via simulation on current computers.
However, for these sizes the minimum energy gaps of most instances are fairly
large, so the good performance scaling seen for small problems may not reflect
asymptotic behavior where costs are dominated by tiny gaps. Moreover, the
resulting search costs are much higher than for other methods. Variants of the
quantum algorithm that do not match the adiabatic limit give lower costs, on
average, and slower growth than the conventional GSAT heuristic method.Comment: added discussion of discrete adiabatic method, and simulations with
30 bits 8 pages, 8 figure
Harnessing the Power of Many: Extensible Toolkit for Scalable Ensemble Applications
Many scientific problems require multiple distinct computational tasks to be
executed in order to achieve a desired solution. We introduce the Ensemble
Toolkit (EnTK) to address the challenges of scale, diversity and reliability
they pose. We describe the design and implementation of EnTK, characterize its
performance and integrate it with two distinct exemplar use cases: seismic
inversion and adaptive analog ensembles. We perform nine experiments,
characterizing EnTK overheads, strong and weak scalability, and the performance
of two use case implementations, at scale and on production infrastructures. We
show how EnTK meets the following general requirements: (i) implementing
dedicated abstractions to support the description and execution of ensemble
applications; (ii) support for execution on heterogeneous computing
infrastructures; (iii) efficient scalability up to O(10^4) tasks; and (iv)
fault tolerance. We discuss novel computational capabilities that EnTK enables
and the scientific advantages arising thereof. We propose EnTK as an important
addition to the suite of tools in support of production scientific computing
- …