A Grid-Aware Branch, Cut and Price Implementation

This paper presents a grid-enabled system for solving large-scale optimization problems. The system has been developed using Globus and MPICH-G2 grid technologies, and consists of two BCP solvers and of an interface portal. After a brief introduction to Branch, Cut and Price optimization algorithms, the system architecture, the solvers and the portal user interface are described. Finally, some of the tests performed and the obtained results are illustrated.

[1]  John E. Beasley,et al.  OR-Library: Distributing Test Problems by Electronic Mail , 1990 .

[2]  Kento Aida,et al.  A case study in running a parallel branch and bound application on the grid , 2005, The 2005 Symposium on Applications and the Internet.

[3]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  Grids and Grid technologies for wide‐area distributed computing , 2002, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[4]  Antonio Sassano,et al.  On the p-Median polytope , 2001, Math. Program..

[5]  R. Barbera.  The GENIUS Grid Portal , 2003 .

[6]  Thomas Polzer,et al.  Portable parallel branch-and-bound library(ppbb-lib): User manual version 1 , 1996 .

[7]  Laurence A. Wolsey,et al.  bc–opt: a branch-and-cut code for mixed integer programs , 1999, Math. Program..

[8]  Ian T. Foster,et al.  The anatomy of the grid: enabling scalable virtual organizations , 2001, Proceedings First IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid.

[9]  Steven Tuecke,et al.  Enabling Scalable Virtual Organizations , 2001 .

[10]  Yuji Shinano,et al.  Control schemes in a generalized utility for parallel branch-and-bound algorithms , 1997, Proceedings 11th International Parallel Processing Symposium.

[11]  Matthew J. Saltzman,et al.  A Library Hierarchy for Implementing Scalable Parallel Search Algorithms , 2004, The Journal of Supercomputing.

[12]  Steven Tuecke,et al.  The Anatomy of the Grid , 2003 .

[13]  Ian T. Foster,et al.  MPICH-G2: A Grid-enabled implementation of the Message Passing Interface , 2002, J. Parallel Distributed Comput..

[14]  Qun Chen,et al.  FATCOP 2.0: Advanced Features in an Opportunistic Mixed Integer Programming Solver , 2001, Ann. Oper. Res..

[15]  Martin W. P. Savelsbergh,et al.  An Updated Mixed Integer Programming Library: MIPLIB 3.0 , 1998 .

[16]  Jason Novotny,et al.  The Grid Portal Development Kit , 2002, Concurr. Comput. Pract. Exp..

[17]  Cynthia A. Phillips,et al.  Pico: An Object-Oriented Framework for Parallel Branch and Bound * , 2001 .

[18]  Kerstin Kleese van Dam,et al.  AN INTEGRATED E-SCIENCE ENVIRONMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE , 2003 .

[19]  Jason Novotny,et al.  GridSphere: an advanced portal framework , 2004, Proceedings. 30th Euromicro Conference, 2004..

[20]  Qun Chen,et al.  FATCOP: A Fault Tolerant Condor-PVM Mixed Integer Programming Solver , 2000, SIAM J. Optim..

[21]  Lúcia Maria de A. Drummond,et al.  A grid-enabled distributed branch-and-bound algorithm with application on the Steiner Problem in graphs , 2006, Parallel Comput..

[22]  Cynthia A. Phillips,et al.  PICO: An Object-Oriented Framework for Branch and Bound , 2000 .

[23]  Matthew J. Saltzman,et al.  Parallel branch, cut, and price for large-scale discrete optimization , 2003, Math. Program..

[24]  Jeff Linderoth,et al.  Topics in parallel integer optimization , 1998 .

[25]  Kurt Mueller,et al.  The GridPort toolkit: a system for building Grid portals , 2001, Proceedings 10th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing.