Quafu-Qcover:Explore combinatorial optimization problems on cloud-based quantum computers

We introduce Quafu-Qcover,an open-source cloud-based software package developed for solving combinatorial optimization problems using quantum simulators and hardware backends.Quafu-Qcover provides a standardized and comprehensive workflow that utilizes the quantum approximate optimization algorithm(QAOA).It facilitates the automatic conversion of the original problem into a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization(QUBO)model and its corresponding Ising model,which can be subsequently transformed into a weight graph.The core of Qcover relies on a graph decomposition-based classical algorithm,which efficiently derives the optimal parameters for the shallow QAOA circuit.Quafu-Qcover incorporates a dedicated compiler capable of translating QAOA circuits into physical quantum circuits that can be executed on Quafu cloud quantum computers.Compared to a general-purpose compiler,our compiler demonstrates the ability to generate shorter circuit depths,while also exhibiting superior speed performance.Additionally,the Qcover compiler has the capability to dynamically create a library of qubits coupling substructures in real-time,utilizing the most recent calibration data from the superconducting quantum devices.This ensures that computational tasks can be assigned to connected physical qubits with the highest fidelity.The Quafu-Qcover allows us to retrieve quantum computing sampling results using a task ID at any time,enabling asynchronous processing.Moreover,it incorporates modules for results preprocessing and visualization,facilitating an intuitive display of solutions for combinatorial optimization problems.We hope that Quafu-Qcover can serve as an instructive illustration for how to explore application problems on the Quafu cloud quantum computers.

Learning to Branch in Combinatorial Optimization With Graph Pointer Networks

Traditional expert-designed branching rules in branch-and-bound(B&B) are static, often failing to adapt to diverse and evolving problem instances. Crafting these rules is labor-intensive, and may not scale well with complex problems.Given the frequent need to solve varied combinatorial optimization problems, leveraging statistical learning to auto-tune B&B algorithms for specific problem classes becomes attractive. This paper proposes a graph pointer network model to learn the branch rules. Graph features, global features and historical features are designated to represent the solver state. The graph neural network processes graph features, while the pointer mechanism assimilates the global and historical features to finally determine the variable on which to branch. The model is trained to imitate the expert strong branching rule by a tailored top-k Kullback-Leibler divergence loss function. Experiments on a series of benchmark problems demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the widely used expert-designed branching rules. It also outperforms state-of-the-art machine-learning-based branch-and-bound methods in terms of solving speed and search tree size on all the test instances. In addition, the model can generalize to unseen instances and scale to larger instances.

Time Complexity of Evolutionary Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization:A Decade of Results

Computational time complexity analyzes of evolutionary algorithms （EAs） have been performed since the mid-nineties. The first results were related to very simple algorithms, such as the （1＋1）-EA, on toy problems. These efforts produced a deeper understanding of how EAs perform on different kinds of fitness landscapes and general mathematical tools that may be extended to the analysis of more complicated EAs on more realistic problems. In fact, in recent years, it has been possible to analyze the （1＋1）-EA on combinatorial optimization problems with practical applications and more realistic population-based EAs on structured toy problems. This paper presents a survey of the results obtained in the last decade along these two research lines. The most common mathematical techniques are introduced, the basic ideas behind them are discussed and their elective applications are highlighted. Solved problems that were still open are enumerated as are those still awaiting for a solution. New questions and problems arisen in the meantime are also considered.

SOME COMBINATORIAL OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS ARISING FROM VLSI CIRCUIT DESIGN

This paper is basically a survey to show a number of combinatorial optimization problems arising from VLSI circuit design. Some of them including the existence problem, minimax problem, net representation, bend minimization, area minimization, placement problem, routing problem, etc. are especially discussed with new results and theoretical ideas for treating them. Finally, a number of problems for further research are mentioned.

Optimizing combination of aircraft maintenance tasks by adaptive genetic algorithm based on cluster search

It is significant to combine multiple tasks into an optimal work package in decision-making of aircraft maintenance to reduce cost,so a cost rate model of combinatorial maintenance is an urgent need.However,the optimal combination under various constraints not only involves numerical calculations but also is an NP-hard combinatorial problem.To solve the problem,an adaptive genetic algorithm based on cluster search,which is divided into two phases,is put forward.In the first phase,according to the density,all individuals can be homogeneously scattered over the whole solution space through crossover and mutation and better individuals are collected as candidate cluster centres.In the second phase,the search is confined to the neighbourhood of some selected possible solutions to accurately solve with cluster radius decreasing slowly,meanwhile all clusters continuously move to better regions until all the peaks in the question space is searched.This algorithm can efficiently solve the combination problem.Taking the optimization on decision-making of aircraft maintenance by the algorithm for an example,maintenance which combines multiple parts or tasks can significantly enhance economic benefit when the halt cost is rather high.

Combinatorial Optimization Based Analog Circuit Fault Diagnosis with Back Propagation Neural Network

Electronic components' reliability has become the key of the complex system mission execution. Analog circuit is an important part of electronic components. Its fault diagnosis is far more challenging than that of digital circuit. Simulations and applications have shown that the methods based on BP neural network are effective in analog circuit fault diagnosis. Aiming at the tolerance of analog circuit,a combinatorial optimization diagnosis scheme was proposed with back propagation( BP) neural network( BPNN).The main contributions of this scheme included two parts:( 1) the random tolerance samples were added into the nominal training samples to establish new training samples,which were used to train the BP neural network based diagnosis model;( 2) the initial weights of the BP neural network were optimized by genetic algorithm( GA) to avoid local minima,and the BP neural network was tuned with Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm( LMA) in the local solution space to look for the optimum solution or approximate optimal solutions. The experimental results show preliminarily that the scheme substantially improves the whole learning process approximation and generalization ability,and effectively promotes analog circuit fault diagnosis performance based on BPNN.

A Combinatorial Optimized Knapsack Linear Space for Information Retrieval

Key information extraction can reduce the dimensional effects while evaluating the correct preferences of users during semantic data analysis.Currently,the classifiers are used to maximize the performance of web-page recommendation in terms of precision and satisfaction.The recent method disambiguates contextual sentiment using conceptual prediction with robustness,however the conceptual prediction method is not able to yield the optimal solution.Context-dependent terms are primarily evaluated by constructing linear space of context features,presuming that if the terms come together in certain consumerrelated reviews,they are semantically reliant.Moreover,the more frequently they coexist,the greater the semantic dependency is.However,the influence of the terms that coexist with each other can be part of the frequency of the terms of their semantic dependence,as they are non-integrative and their individual meaning cannot be derived.In this work,we consider the strength of a term and the influence of a term as a combinatorial optimization,called Combinatorial Optimized Linear Space Knapsack for Information Retrieval(COLSK-IR).The COLSK-IR is considered as a knapsack problem with the total weight being the“term influence”or“influence of term”and the total value being the“term frequency”or“frequency of term”for semantic data analysis.The method,by which the term influence and the term frequency are considered to identify the optimal solutions,is called combinatorial optimizations.Thus,we choose the knapsack for performing an integer programming problem and perform multiple experiments using the linear space through combinatorial optimization to identify the possible optimum solutions.It is evident from our experimental results that the COLSK-IR provides better results than previous methods to detect strongly dependent snippets with minimum ambiguity that are related to inter-sentential context during semantic data analysis.

Application of the edge of chaos in combinatorial optimization

Many problems in science,engineering and real life are related to the combinatorial optimization.However,many combinatorial optimization problems belong to a class of the NP-hard problems,and their globally optimal solutions are usually difficult to solve.Therefore,great attention has been attracted to the algorithms of searching the globally optimal solution or near-optimal solution for the combinatorial optimization problems.As a typical combinatorial optimization problem,the traveling salesman problem(TSP)often serves as a touchstone for novel approaches.It has been found that natural systems,particularly brain nervous systems,work at the critical region between order and disorder,namely,on the edge of chaos.In this work,an algorithm for the combinatorial optimization problems is proposed based on the neural networks on the edge of chaos(ECNN).The algorithm is then applied to TSPs of 10 cities,21 cities,48 cities and 70 cities.The results show that ECNN algorithm has strong ability to drive the networks away from local minimums.Compared with the transiently chaotic neural network(TCNN),the stochastic chaotic neural network(SCNN)algorithms and other optimization algorithms,much higher rates of globally optimal solutions and near-optimal solutions are obtained with ECNN algorithm.To conclude,our algorithm provides an effective way for solving the combinatorial optimization problems.

Combinatorial Discovery and Optimization of New Materials

The concept of the combinatorial discovery and optimization of new materials, and its background,importance, and application, as well as its current status in the world, are briefly reviewed in this paper.

Original optimal method to solve the all-pairs shortest path problem: Dhouib-matrix-ALL-SPP

The All-pairs shortest path problem(ALL-SPP)aims to find the shortest path joining all the vertices in a given graph.This study proposed a new optimal method,Dhouib-matrix-ALL-SPP(DM-ALL-SPP)to solve the ALL-SPP based on column-row navigation through the adjacency matrix.DM-ALL-SPP is designed to generate in a single execution the shortest path with details among all-pairs of vertices for a graph with positive and negative weighted edges.Even for graphs with a negative cycle,DM-ALL-SPP reported a negative cycle.In addition,DM-ALL-SPP continues to work for directed,undirected and mixed graphs.Furthermore,it is characterized by two phases:the first phase consists of adding by column repeated(n)iterations(where n is the number of vertices),and the second phase resides in adding by row executed in the worst case(n∗log(n))iterations.The first phase,focused on improving the elements of each column by adding their values to each row and modifying them with the smallest value.The second phase is emphasized by rows only for the elements modified in the first phase.Different instances from the literature were used to test the performance of the proposed DM-ALL-SPP method,which was developed using the Python programming language and the results were compared to those obtained by the Floyd-Warshall algorithm.

A Predator-prey Particle Swarm Optimization Approach to Multiple UCAV Air Combat Modeled by Dynamic Game Theory

Dynamic game theory has received considerable attention as a promising technique for formulating control actions for agents in an extended complex enterprise that involves an adversary. At each decision making step, each side seeks the best scheme with the purpose of maximizing its own objective function. In this paper, a game theoretic approach based on predatorprey particle swarm optimization (PP-PSO) is presented, and the dynamic task assignment problem for multiple unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) in military operation is decomposed and modeled as a two-player game at each decision stage. The optimal assignment scheme of each stage is regarded as a mixed Nash equilibrium, which can be solved by using the PP-PSO. The effectiveness of our proposed methodology is verified by a typical example of an air military operation that involves two opposing forces: the attacking force Red and the defense force Blue. © 2014 Chinese Association of Automation.

A Genetic Algorithm-based Approach to Scheduling of Batch Production with Maximum Profit

The optimal scheduling of multi-product batch process is studied and a new mathematics model targeting the maximum profit is proposed, which can be solved by the modified genetic algorithm (MGA) with mixed coding (sequence coding and decimal coding) developed by us. In which, the partially matched cross over (PMX) and reverse mutation are used for the sequence coding, whereas the arithmetic crossover and heteropic mutation are used for the decimal coding. In addition, the relationship between production scale and production cost is analyzed and the maximum profit is always a trade-off of the production scale and production cost. Two examples are solved to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

A Gene-Pool Based Genetic Algorithm for TSP

Based on the analysis of previous genetic algorithms (GAs) for TSP, a novel method called Ge- GA is proposed. It combines gene pool and GA so as to direct the evolution of the whole population. The core of Ge- GA is the construction of gene pool and how to apply it to GA. Different from standard GAs, Ge- GA aims to enhance the ability of exploration and exploitation by incorporating global search with local search. On one hand a local search called Ge- Lo-calSearch operator is proposed to improve the solution quality, on the other hand the modified Inver-Over operator called Ge InverOver is considered as a global search mechanism to expand solution space of local minimal. Both of these operators are based on the gene pool. Our algorithm is applied to 11 well-known traveling salesman problems whose numbers of cities are from 70 to 1577 cities. The experiments results indicate that Ge- GA has great robustness for TSP. For each test instance, the average value of solution quality, found in accepted time, stays within 0. 001% from the optimum.

Hopfield neural network based on ant system

Hopfield neural network is a single layer feedforward neural network. Hopfield network requires some control parameters to be carefully selected, else the network is apt to converge to local minimum. An ant system is a nature inspired meta heuristic algorithm. It has been applied to several combinatorial optimization problems such as Traveling Salesman Problem, Scheduling Problems, etc. This paper will show an ant system may be used in tuning the network control parameters by a group of cooperated ants. The major advantage of this network is to adjust the network parameters automatically, avoiding a blind search for the set of control parameters. This network was tested on two TSP problems, 5 cities and 10 cities. The results have shown an obvious improvement.

A DEGREE SEQUENCE METHOD FOR THE CUTWIDTH PROBLEM OF GRAPHS

The cutwidth problem fora graph G is to embed G into a path such thatthe maximum number of overlap edges is minimized.This paperpresents an approach based on the degree se- quence of G for determining the exact value of cutwidth of typical graphs (e.g.,n- cube,cater- pillars) .Relations between the cutwidth and other graph- theoretic parameters are studied as wel

Smart Cities in Europe and the ALMA Logistics Project

In this paper, a brief survey of smart citiy projects in Europe is presented. This survey shows the extent of transport and logistics in smart cities. We concentrate on a smart city project we have been working on that is related to A Logistic Mobile Application （ALMA）. The application is based on Internet of Things and combines a communication infrastructure and a High Performance Computing infrastructure in order to deliver mobile logistic services with high quality of service and adaptation to the dynamic nature of logistic operations.

Task scheduling for multi-electro-magnetic detection satellite with a combined algorithm

Task scheduling for electro-magnetic detection satellite is a typical combinatorial optimization problem. The count of constraints that need to be taken into account is of large scale. An algorithm combined integer programming with constraint programming is presented. This algorithm is deployed in this problem through two steps. The first step is to decompose the original problem into master and sub-problem using the logic-based Benders decomposition; then a circus combines master and sub-problem solving process together, and the connection between them is general Benders cut. This hybrid algorithm is tested by a set of derived experiments. The result is compared with corresponding outcomes generated by the strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm and the pure constraint programming solver GECODE, which is an open source software. These tests and comparisons yield promising effect.

Binary Fruit Fly Swarm Algorithms for the Set Covering Problem

Currently,the industry is experiencing an exponential increase in dealing with binary-based combinatorial problems.In this sense,metaheuristics have been a common trend in the field in order to design approaches to solve them successfully.Thus,a well-known strategy consists in the use of algorithms based on discrete swarms transformed to perform in binary environments.Following the No Free Lunch theorem,we are interested in testing the performance of the Fruit Fly Algorithm,this is a bio-inspired metaheuristic for deducing global optimization in continuous spaces,based on the foraging behavior of the fruit fly,which usually has much better sensory perception of smell and vision than any other species.On the other hand,the Set Coverage Problem is a well-known NP-hard problem with many practical applications,including production line balancing,utility installation,and crew scheduling in railroad and mass transit companies.In this paper,we propose different binarization methods for the Fruit Fly Algorithm,using Sshaped and V-shaped transfer functions and various discretization methods to make the algorithm work in a binary search space.We are motivated with this approach,because in this way we can deliver to future researchers interested in this area,a way to be able to work with continuous metaheuristics in binary domains.This new approach was tested on benchmark instances of the Set Coverage Problem and the computational results show that the proposed algorithm is robust enough to produce good results with low computational cost.

Investigation of a Network Failure Problem with a Significant Path, from the Perspective of Crisis Management

The objective of this study is to investigate a network failure problem with a significant path, emerging from the context of crisis management, such as in the case of natural disasters. For a given tree with m failed edges, we assume that we have sufficient resources to recover k edges of the m edges. Each node has a positive weight. In this situation, we consider which k edges should be fixed in order to maximize the sum of the weights of the nodes reachable from the significant path. In this paper, we formulate such a problem as a combinatorial problem. Further, we show that a part of our problem may be solved by translating it into the terms of the so-called tree knapsack problem.

A unified pre-training and adaptation framework for combinatorial optimization on graphs

Combinatorial optimization(CO)on graphs is a classic topic that has been extensively studied across many scientific and industrial fields.Recently,solving CO problems on graphs through learning methods has attracted great attention.Advanced deep learning methods,e.g.,graph neural networks(GNNs),have been used to effectively assist the process of solving COs.However,current frameworks based on GNNs are mainly designed for certain CO problems,thereby failing to consider their transferable and generalizable abilities among different COs on graphs.Moreover,simply using original graphs to model COs only captures the direct correlations among objects,which does not consider the mathematical logicality and properties of COs.In this paper,we propose a unified pre-training and adaptation framework for COs on graphs with the help of the maximum satisfiability(Max-SAT)problem.We first use Max-SAT to bridge different COs on graphs since they can be converted to Max-SAT problems represented by standard formulas and clauses with logical information.Then we further design a pre-training and domain adaptation framework to extract the transferable and generalizable features so that different COs can benefit from them.In the pre-training stage,Max-SAT instances are generated to initialize the parameters of the model.In the fine-tuning stage,instances from CO and Max-SAT problems are used for adaptation so that the transferable ability can be further improved.Numerical experiments on several datasets show that features extracted by our framework exhibit superior transferability and Max-SAT can boost the ability to solve COs on graphs.