MiniZinc Challenge 2018

The Challenge

The aim of the challenge is to start to compare various constraint solving technology on the same problems sets. The focus is on finite domain propagation solvers. An auxiliary aim is to build up a library of interesting problem models, which can be used to compare solvers and solving technologies.

Entrants to the challenge provide a FlatZinc or MiniZinc solver and global constraint definitions specialized for their solver. Each solver is run on 100 MiniZinc model instances. For FlatZinc solvers, we run the translator mzn2fzn on the MiniZinc model and instance using the provided global constraint definitions to create a FlatZinc file. The FlatZinc file is input to the provided FlatZinc solver. For MiniZinc solvers, the MiniZinc model and instance are input to the provided solver. Points are awarded for solving problems, speed of solution, and goodness of solutions (for optimization problems).

Announcements

  • 2018-09-20 Amendments of the results had to been made due to an issue with the solution checker. More details are available here. Thanks to Gustav Björdal and Michael Marte for reporting.
  • 2018-08-28 Announcement of the results available here.
  • 2018-07-30 Submission deadline was extended.
  • 2018-06-27 Official Call for Participation for the MiniZinc Challenge has been made.
  • 2018-03-08 Initial Call for MiniZinc Problems has been made.

Dates

  • Registration opens: Now.
  • Problem submission deadline: Sun, 20 May 2018Sun, 27 May 2018.
  • Initial submission round begins: Sun, 15 July 2018.
  • Initial submission round ends: Sat, 21 July 2018.
  • Final submissions: Sat, 28 July 2018Thu, 2 August 2018.
  • Announcement of results at CP2018: 27 - 31 August (Lille, France).

Registration

Entrants must register their intention to enter the contest before the first submission round.
The first submission round is an opportunity for us to provide feedback concerning your entry; it does not count towards the final result.
Feel free to register and later withdraw.

To register send an email with the following subject line

[MZNC18] registration

to

mzn-challenge ‘at’ lists.csiro.au

In the body of the email please include an email address at which we can contact you and the name of your solver.

Submission

All entrants need to extend the MiniZinc docker image (available at https://hub.docker.com/r/minizinc/mznc2018/, tag 1.0) with their solver. A detail information how to do and about docker are available here. The entrant will upload the extended image to Docker Hub and sent the location of the extenstion to the MiniZinc organisers. Please read the rules before submission.

Problem Submission

We strongly encourage all entrants to submit one or two MiniZinc models satisfying the contest requirements, together with instances for these models. They can be submitted as tarballs to:

mzn-challenge ‘at’ lists.csiro.au

The sooner they are submitted the better, the deadline is Sun, 20 May 2018. The call for problem submission is available here. Please feel free to distribute it.

Rules

The rules for the MiniZinc Challenge 2018 are available here.
If we need to make changes to the rules, all registered entrants will be informed by email.

Judges

The judges will be responsible for selecting the tested instances, vetting the results, and ruling on any questions that arise during the competition.

  • Jimmy H.M. Lee. Chinese University of Hong Kong.
  • Barry O'Sullivan, University College Cork, Ireland.
  • Roland Yap, National University of Singapore.

Feedback

This is the tenth time this challenge is run, and there are many possibilities for comparing CP solvers. The rules try to make a sensible set of choices for the comparison. We would welcome any comments or suggestions regarding the running of this challenge.

We can be contacted with the subject starting with [MZNC18] at:

mzn-challenge ‘at’ lists.csiro.au

MiniZinc forums

The MiniZinc forum is for beginners, users, and developers to discuss MiniZinc. If you would like to join then sign up for the MiniZinc forums.

Links

The MiniZinc page includes a list of resources related to MiniZinc and FlatZinc.

The MiniZinc 2.0 Distribution includes a MiniZinc-to-FlatZinc converter and a large suite of MiniZinc examples and benchmarks.

The MiniZinc Challenge 2017 webpage, include the results from the previous year.

The MiniZinc Challenges 2008-2017 webpage, include the results from each MiniZinc Challenge.