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Documents authored by Cai, Shaowei


Document
ParLS-PBO: A Parallel Local Search Solver for Pseudo Boolean Optimization

Authors: Zhihan Chen, Peng Lin, Hao Hu, and Shaowei Cai

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 307, 30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2024)


Abstract
As a broadly applied technique in numerous optimization problems, recently, local search has been employed to solve Pseudo-Boolean Optimization (PBO) problem. A representative local search solver for PBO is LS-PBO. In this paper, firstly, we improve LS-PBO by a dynamic scoring mechanism, which dynamically strikes a balance between score on hard constraints and score on the objective function. Moreover, on top of this improved LS-PBO, we develop the first parallel local search PBO solver. The main idea is to share good solutions among different threads to guide the search, by maintaining a pool of feasible solutions. For evaluating solutions when updating the pool, we propose a function that considers both the solution quality and the diversity of the pool. Furthermore, we calculate the polarity density in the pool to enhance the scoring function of local search. Our empirical experiments show clear benefits of the proposed parallel approach, making it competitive with the parallel version of the famous commercial solver Gurobi.

Cite as

Zhihan Chen, Peng Lin, Hao Hu, and Shaowei Cai. ParLS-PBO: A Parallel Local Search Solver for Pseudo Boolean Optimization. In 30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 307, pp. 5:1-5:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)


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@InProceedings{chen_et_al:LIPIcs.CP.2024.5,
  author =	{Chen, Zhihan and Lin, Peng and Hu, Hao and Cai, Shaowei},
  title =	{{ParLS-PBO: A Parallel Local Search Solver for Pseudo Boolean Optimization}},
  booktitle =	{30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2024)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-336-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{307},
  editor =	{Shaw, Paul},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2024.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-206900},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2024.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pseudo-Boolean Optimization, Parallel Solving, Local Search, Scoring Function, Solution Pool}
}
Document
An Efficient Local Search Solver for Mixed Integer Programming

Authors: Peng Lin, Mengchuan Zou, and Shaowei Cai

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 307, 30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2024)


Abstract
Mixed integer programming (MIP) is a fundamental model in operations research. Local search is a powerful method for solving hard problems, but the development of local search solvers for MIP still needs to be explored. This work develops an efficient local search solver for solving MIP, called Local-MIP. We propose two new operators for MIP to adaptively modify variables for optimizing the objective function and satisfying constraints, respectively. Furthermore, we design a new weighting scheme to dynamically balance the priority between the objective function and each constraint, and propose a two-level scoring function structure to hierarchically guide the search for high-quality feasible solutions. Experiments are conducted on seven public benchmarks to compare Local-MIP with state-of-the-art MIP solvers, which demonstrate that Local-MIP significantly outperforms CPLEX, HiGHS, SCIP and Feasibility Jump, and is competitive with the most powerful commercial solver Gurobi. Moreover, Local-MIP establishes 4 new records for MIPLIB open instances.

Cite as

Peng Lin, Mengchuan Zou, and Shaowei Cai. An Efficient Local Search Solver for Mixed Integer Programming. In 30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 307, pp. 19:1-19:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)


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@InProceedings{lin_et_al:LIPIcs.CP.2024.19,
  author =	{Lin, Peng and Zou, Mengchuan and Cai, Shaowei},
  title =	{{An Efficient Local Search Solver for Mixed Integer Programming}},
  booktitle =	{30th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2024)},
  pages =	{19:1--19:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-336-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{307},
  editor =	{Shaw, Paul},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2024.19},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-207041},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2024.19},
  annote =	{Keywords: Mixed Integer Programming, Local Search, Operator, Scoring Function}
}
Document
Enhancing MaxSAT Local Search via a Unified Soft Clause Weighting Scheme

Authors: Yi Chu, Chu-Min Li, Furong Ye, and Shaowei Cai

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 305, 27th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT 2024)


Abstract
Local search has been widely applied to solve the well-known (weighted) partial MaxSAT problem, significantly influencing many real-world applications. The main difficulty to overcome when designing a local search algorithm is that it can easily fall into local optima. Clause weighting is a beneficial technique that dynamically adjusts the landscape of search space to help the algorithm escape from local optima. Existing works tend to increase the weights of falsified clauses, and such strategies may result in an unpredictable landscape of search space during the optimization process. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a Unified Soft Clause Weighting Scheme called Unified-SW, which increases the weights of all soft clauses in feasible local optima, whether they are satisfied or not, while preserving the hierarchy among them. We implemented Unified-SW in a new local search solver called USW-LS. Experimental results demonstrate that USW-LS, outperforms the state-of-the-art local search solvers across benchmarks from anytime tracks of recent MaxSAT Evaluations. More promisingly, a hybrid solver combining USW-LS and TT-Open-WBO-Inc won all four categories in the anytime track of MaxSAT Evaluation 2023.

Cite as

Yi Chu, Chu-Min Li, Furong Ye, and Shaowei Cai. Enhancing MaxSAT Local Search via a Unified Soft Clause Weighting Scheme. In 27th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 305, pp. 8:1-8:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)


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@InProceedings{chu_et_al:LIPIcs.SAT.2024.8,
  author =	{Chu, Yi and Li, Chu-Min and Ye, Furong and Cai, Shaowei},
  title =	{{Enhancing MaxSAT Local Search via a Unified Soft Clause Weighting Scheme}},
  booktitle =	{27th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT 2024)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-334-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{305},
  editor =	{Chakraborty, Supratik and Jiang, Jie-Hong Roland},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SAT.2024.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-205301},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SAT.2024.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Weighted Partial MaxSAT, Local Search Method, Weighting Scheme}
}
Document
Towards More Efficient Local Search for Pseudo-Boolean Optimization

Authors: Yi Chu, Shaowei Cai, Chuan Luo, Zhendong Lei, and Cong Peng

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 280, 29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023)


Abstract
Pseudo-Boolean (PB) constraints are highly expressive, and many combinatorial optimization problems can be modeled using pseudo-Boolean optimization (PBO). It is recognized that stochastic local search (SLS) is a powerful paradigm for solving combinatorial optimization problems, but the development of SLS for solving PBO is still in its infancy. In this paper, we develop an effective SLS algorithm for solving PBO, dubbed NuPBO, which introduces a novel scoring function for PB constraints and a new weighting scheme. We conduct experiments on a broad range of six public benchmarks, including three real-world benchmarks, a benchmark from PB competition, an integer linear programming optimization benchmark, and a crafted combinatorial benchmark, to compare NuPBO against five state-of-the-art competitors, including a recently-proposed SLS PBO solver LS-PBO, two complete PB solvers PBO-IHS and RoundingSat, and two mixed integer programming (MIP) solvers Gurobi and SCIP. NuPBO has been exhibited to perform best on these three real-world benchmarks. On the other three benchmarks, NuPBO shows competitive performance compared to state-of-the-art competitors, and it significantly outperforms LS-PBO, indicating that NuPBO greatly advances the state of the art in SLS for solving PBO.

Cite as

Yi Chu, Shaowei Cai, Chuan Luo, Zhendong Lei, and Cong Peng. Towards More Efficient Local Search for Pseudo-Boolean Optimization. In 29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 280, pp. 12:1-12:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)


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@InProceedings{chu_et_al:LIPIcs.CP.2023.12,
  author =	{Chu, Yi and Cai, Shaowei and Luo, Chuan and Lei, Zhendong and Peng, Cong},
  title =	{{Towards More Efficient Local Search for Pseudo-Boolean Optimization}},
  booktitle =	{29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-300-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{280},
  editor =	{Yap, Roland H. C.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2023.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-190490},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2023.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pseudo-Boolean Optimization, Stochastic Local Search, Scoring Function, Weighting Scheme}
}
Document
Improving Local Search for Pseudo Boolean Optimization by Fragile Scoring Function and Deep Optimization

Authors: Wenbo Zhou, Yujiao Zhao, Yiyuan Wang, Shaowei Cai, Shimao Wang, Xinyu Wang, and Minghao Yin

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 280, 29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023)


Abstract
Pseudo-Boolean optimization (PBO) is usually used to model combinatorial optimization problems, especially for some real-world applications. Despite its significant importance in both theory and applications, there are few works on using local search to solve PBO. This paper develops a novel local search framework for PBO, which has three main ideas. First, we design a two-level selection strategy to evaluate all candidate variables. Second, we propose a novel deep optimization strategy to disturb some search spaces. Third, a sampling flipping method is applied to help the algorithm jump out of local optimum. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms outperform three state-of-the-art PBO algorithms on most instances.

Cite as

Wenbo Zhou, Yujiao Zhao, Yiyuan Wang, Shaowei Cai, Shimao Wang, Xinyu Wang, and Minghao Yin. Improving Local Search for Pseudo Boolean Optimization by Fragile Scoring Function and Deep Optimization. In 29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 280, pp. 41:1-41:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)


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@InProceedings{zhou_et_al:LIPIcs.CP.2023.41,
  author =	{Zhou, Wenbo and Zhao, Yujiao and Wang, Yiyuan and Cai, Shaowei and Wang, Shimao and Wang, Xinyu and Yin, Minghao},
  title =	{{Improving Local Search for Pseudo Boolean Optimization by Fragile Scoring Function and Deep Optimization}},
  booktitle =	{29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023)},
  pages =	{41:1--41:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-300-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{280},
  editor =	{Yap, Roland H. C.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2023.41},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-190784},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2023.41},
  annote =	{Keywords: Local Search, Pseudo-Boolean Optimization, Deep Optimization}
}
Document
Short Paper
Improving Local Search for Structured SAT Formulas via Unit Propagation Based Construct and Cut Initialization (Short Paper)

Authors: Shaowei Cai, Chuan Luo, Xindi Zhang, and Jian Zhang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 210, 27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021)


Abstract
This work is dedicated to improving local search solvers for the Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problem on structured instances. We propose a construct-and-cut (CnC) algorithm based on unit propagation, which is used to produce initial assignments for local search. We integrate our CnC initialization procedure within several state-of-the-art local search SAT solvers, and obtain the improved solvers. Experiments are carried out with a benchmark encoded from a spectrum repacking project as well as benchmarks encoded from two important mathematical problems namely Boolean Pythagorean Triple and Schur Number Five. The experiments show that the CnC initialization improves the local search solvers, leading to better performance than state-of-the-art SAT solvers based on Conflict Driven Clause Learning (CDCL) solvers.

Cite as

Shaowei Cai, Chuan Luo, Xindi Zhang, and Jian Zhang. Improving Local Search for Structured SAT Formulas via Unit Propagation Based Construct and Cut Initialization (Short Paper). In 27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 210, pp. 5:1-5:10, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)


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@InProceedings{cai_et_al:LIPIcs.CP.2021.5,
  author =	{Cai, Shaowei and Luo, Chuan and Zhang, Xindi and Zhang, Jian},
  title =	{{Improving Local Search for Structured SAT Formulas via Unit Propagation Based Construct and Cut Initialization}},
  booktitle =	{27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:10},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-211-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{210},
  editor =	{Michel, Laurent D.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2021.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-152969},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2021.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Satisfiability, Local Search, Unit Propagation, Mathematical Problems}
}
Document
Improving Local Search for Minimum Weighted Connected Dominating Set Problem by Inner-Layer Local Search

Authors: Bohan Li, Kai Wang, Yiyuan Wang, and Shaowei Cai

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 210, 27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021)


Abstract
The minimum weighted connected dominating set (MWCDS) problem is an important variant of connected dominating set problems with wide applications, especially in heterogenous networks and gene regulatory networks. In the paper, we develop a nested local search algorithm called NestedLS for solving MWCDS on classic benchmarks and massive graphs. In this local search framework, we propose two novel ideas to make it effective by utilizing previous search information. First, we design the restart based smoothing mechanism as a diversification method to escape from local optimal. Second, we propose a novel inner-layer local search method to enlarge the candidate removal set, which can be modelled as an optimized version of spanning tree problem. Moreover, inner-layer local search method is a general method for maintaining the connectivity constraint when dealing with massive graphs. Experimental results show that NestedLS outperforms state-of-the-art meta-heuristic algorithms on most instances.

Cite as

Bohan Li, Kai Wang, Yiyuan Wang, and Shaowei Cai. Improving Local Search for Minimum Weighted Connected Dominating Set Problem by Inner-Layer Local Search. In 27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 210, pp. 39:1-39:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)


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@InProceedings{li_et_al:LIPIcs.CP.2021.39,
  author =	{Li, Bohan and Wang, Kai and Wang, Yiyuan and Cai, Shaowei},
  title =	{{Improving Local Search for Minimum Weighted Connected Dominating Set Problem by Inner-Layer Local Search}},
  booktitle =	{27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021)},
  pages =	{39:1--39:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-211-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{210},
  editor =	{Michel, Laurent D.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2021.39},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-153304},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2021.39},
  annote =	{Keywords: Operations Research, NP-hard Problem, Local Search, Weighted Connected Dominating Set Problem}
}
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