The MiniZinc Challenge 2013 and other MiniZinc news
Here are some news from the G12 MiniZinc world.
MiniZinc main page: www.minizinc.org
The MiniZinc main page has changed to www.minizinc.org.MiniZinc challenge
From MiniZinc Challenge 2013:The aim of the MiniZinc 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.Here is the Call for Problem Submission:
Entrants to the challenge provide a FlatZinc solver and global constraint definitions specialized for their solver. Each solver is run on 100 MiniZinc model instances. 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 solver. Points are awarded for solving problems, speed of solution, and goodness of solutions (for optimization problems).
Registration opens: Wed, 1 May 2013.
Problem submission deadline: Fri, 14 June 2013.
Initial submission round begins: Mon, 1 July 2013.
Initial submission round ends: Fri, 19 July 2013.
Final submissions: Fri, 2 August 2013.
Announcement of results at CP2013: 17 - 20 September 2013.
For details of the competition see:
http://www.minizinc.org/challenge2013/challenge.html
Note that the scoring system has slightly changed this year, so that solvers that obtain indistiguishable results in quality of solution split the points inversely proportional to the time taken
To register for the challenge please email
mzn-challenge@minizinc.org
The MiniZinc Challenge is an annual solver competition in the Constraint Programming (CP) community held before the International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. The MiniZinc Challenge 2013 is seeking interesting problem sets on which various constraint solving technologies should be compared on this year. Everyone is allowed to submit problems regardless of whether they are an entrant in the challenge.Also see: MiniZinc Challenge Medals 2008-2012
Important dates and deadlines:
Problem submission open: now
Problem submission deadline: Fri, 14 June 2013
Problem submission
Send an email with the subject line “[MZNC13] benchmark” to mzn-challenge 'at' minizinc.org
There are no restrictions on the kind of problems, but ideally they should be of interesting nature such as practice-related problems and puzzles etc. Problem submissions with real-world instances are welcome warmly. Models for the 2013 challenge can only use integer and Boolean variables.
The problem submitter provides a MiniZinc model of the problem and 20 instances ranging from easy-to-solve to hard-to-solve for an “ordinary” CP system. It is strongly encouraged to make use of the global constraint definitions provided in the MiniZinc 1.6 distribution. Please, follow the links below for submission instructions and requirements.
MiniZinc Challenge 2013
MiniZinc forum
Also just released is The MiniZinc forums with three forums:- Beginners: All beginner-level questions about MiniZinc.
- Users: General discussion about MiniZinc. For beginners' questions please use the dedicated Beginners' Forum.
- Developers: Discussions about developing the MiniZinc system and solvers that interface with MiniZinc.