Algorithm selection and scheduling

Abstract

Algorithm portfolios aim to increase the robustness of our ability to solve problems efficiently. While recently proposed algorithm selection methods come ever closer to identifying the most appropriate solver given an input instance, they are bound to make wrong and, at times, costly decisions. Solver scheduling has been proposed to boost the performance of algorithm selection. Scheduling tries to allocate time slots to the given solvers in a portfolio so as to maximize, say, the number of solved instances within a given time limit. We show how to solve the corresponding optimization problem at a low computational cost using column generation, resulting in fast and high quality solutions. We integrate this approach with a recently introduced algorithm selector, which we also extend using other techniques. We propose various static as well as dynamic scheduling strategies, and demonstrate that in comparison to pure algorithm selection, our novel combination of scheduling and solver selection can significantly boost performance. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.