The University of Florida Sparse Matrix Collection is a large, widely available, and actively growing set of sparse matrices that arise in real applications. Its matrices cover a wide spectrum of problem domains, both those arising from problems with underlying 2D or 3D geometry (structural engineering, computational fluid dynamics, model reduction, electromagnetics, semiconductor devices, thermodynamics, materials, acoustics, computer graphics/vision, robotics/kinematics, and other discretizations) and those that typically do not have such geometry (optimization, circuit simulation, networks and graphs, economic and financial modeling, theoretical and quantum chemistry, chemical process simulation, mathematics and statistics, and power networks). The collection meets a vital need that artificially-generated matrices cannot meet, and is widely used by the sparse matrix algorithms community for the development and performance evaluation of sparse matrix algorithms. The collection includes software for accessing and managing the collection, from MATLAB, Fortran, and C.

Sparse Gaussian elimination with partial pivoting computes the factorization PAQ = LU of a sparse matrix A, where the row ordering P is selected during factorization using standard partial pivoting with row interchanges. The goal is to select a column preordering, Q, based solely on the nonzero pattern of A such that the factorization remains as sparse as possible, regardless of the subsequent choice of P. The choice of Q can have a dramatic impact on the number of nonzeros in L and U. One scheme for determining a good column ordering for A is to compute a symmetric ordering that reduces fill-in in the Cholesky factorization of ATA. This approach, which requires the sparsity structure of ATA to be computed, can be expensive both in

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This paper aims at describing the state of the art on quadratic assignment problems (QAPs). It discusses the most important developments in all aspects of the QAP such as linearizations, QAP polyhedra, algorithms to solve the problem to optimality, heuristics, polynomially solvable special cases, and asymptotic behavior. Moreover, it also considers problems related to the QAP, e.g. the biquadratic assignment problem, and discusses the relationship between the QAP and other well known combinatorial optimization problems, e.g. the traveling salesman problem, the graph partitioning problem, etc.

Semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) are derived using the dual of the (homogenized) Lagrangian dual of appropriate equivalent representations of QAP. These relaxations result in the interesting, special, case where only the dual problem of the SDP relaxation has strict interior, i.e. the Slater constraint qualification always fails for the primal problem. Although there is no duality gap in theory, this indicates that the relaxation cannot be solved in a numerically stable way. By exploring the geometrical structure of the relaxation, we are able to find projected SDP relaxations. These new relaxations, and their duals, satisfy the Slater constraint qualification, and so can be solved numerically using primal-dual interior-point methods. For one of our models, a preconditioned conjugate gradient method is used for solving the large linear systems which arise when finding the Newton direction. The preconditioner is found by exploiting th...

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is among the hardest combinatorial optimization problems. Some instances of size n = 30 have remained unsolved for decades. The solution of these problems requires both improvements in mathematical programming algorithms and the utilization of powerful computational platforms. In this article we describe a novel approach to solve QAPs using a state-of-the-art branch-and-bound algorithm running on a federation of geographically distributed resources known as a computational grid. Solution of QAPs of unprecedented complexity, including the nug30, kra30b, and tho30 instances, is reported.

This paper introduces two new techniques for solving the Quadratic Assignment Problem. The first is a heuristic technique, defined in accordance to the Ant System metaphor, and includes as a distinctive feature the use of a new lower bound at each constructive step. The second is a branch and bound exact approach, containing some elements introduced in the Ant algorithm. Computational results prove the effectiveness of both approaches.

Research on using interior point algorithms to solve combinatorial optimization and integer programming problems is surveyed. This paper discusses branch and cut methods for integer programming problems, a potential reduction method based on transforming an integer programming problem to an equivalent nonconvex quadratic programming problem, interior point methods for solving network flow problems, and methods for solving multicommodity flow problems, including an interior point column generation algorithm.

A dual framework allowing the comparison of various bounds for the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) based on linearization, e.g. the bounds of Adams and Johnson, Carraresi and Malucelli, and Hahn and Grant, is presented. We discuss the differences of these bounds and propose a new and more general bounding procedure based on the dual of the linearization of Adams and Johnson. The new procedure has been applied to problems of dimension up to n = 72, and the computational results indicate that the new bound competes well with existing linearization bounds and yields a good trade off between computation time and bound quality.

Semidefinite programming, SDP, is an extension of linear programming, LP, where the nonnegativity constraints are replaced by positive semidefiniteness constraints on matrix variables. SDP has proven successful in obtaining tight relaxations for NP -hard combinatorial optimization problems of simple structure such as the maxcut and graph bisection problems. In this work, we try to solve more complicated combinatorial problems such as the quadratic assignment, general graph partitioning and set partitioning problems. A tight SDP relaxation can be obtained by exploiting the geometrical structure of the convex hull of the feasible points of the original combinatorial problem. The analysis of the structure enables us to find the so-called "minimal face" and "gangster operator" of the SDP. This plays a significant role in simplifying the problem and enables us to derive a unified SDP relaxation for the three different problems. We develop an efficient "partial infeasible" primal-dual inter...