Constraint integer programming (CIP) is a novel paradigm which integrates constraint programming (CP), mixed integer programming (MIP), and satisfiability (SAT) modeling and solving techniques. In this paper we discuss the software framework and solver SCIP (Solving Constraint Integer Programs), which is free for academic and non-commercial use and can be downloaded in source code. This paper gives an overview of the main design concepts of SCIP and how it can be used to solve constraint integer programs. To illustrate the performance and flexibility of SCIP, we apply it to two different problem classes. First, we consider mixed integer programming and show by computational experiments that SCIP is almost competitive to specialized commercial MIP solvers, even though SCIP supports the more general constraint integer programming paradigm. We develop new ingredients that improve current MIP solving technology. As a second application, we employ SCIP to solve chip design verification problems as they arise in the logic design of integrated circuits. This application goes far beyond traditional MIP solving, as it includes several highly non-linear constraints, which can be handled nicely within the constraint integer programming framework. We show anecdotally how the different solving techniques from MIP, CP, and SAT work together inside SCIP to deal with such constraint classes. Finally, experimental results show that our approach outperforms current state-of-the-art techniques for proving the validity of properties on circuits containing arithmetic.
Mixed integer programs are commonly solved with linear programming based branch-and-bound algorithms. The success of the algorithm strongly depends on the strategy used to select the variable to branch on.We present a new generalization called reliability branching of today's state-of-the-art strong branching and pseudocost branching branching strategies for linear programming based branch-and-bound algorithms. After reviewing commonly used branching strategies and performing extensive computational studies we compare different parameter settings and show the superiority of our proposed new strategy.
This paper reports on the fifth version of the Mixed Integer Programming Library. The miplib 2010 is the first miplib release that has been assembled by a large group from academia and from industry, all of whom work in integer programming. There was mutual consent that the concept of the library had to be expanded in order to fulfill the needs of the community. The new version comprises 361 instances sorted into several groups. This includes the main benchmark test set of 87 instances, which
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