MiniZinc Challenge 2021: Call for participation

[Cyderize]

We are inviting all solver developers to register their systems for entry into the annual MiniZinc Challenge for 2021!

The base Docker image for submission is now available for solver developers to prepare their entries. Further instructions on submitting solvers will be made available before the initial submission round.

Note that it is likely that a new version of MiniZinc will be released prior to the initial submission round, in which case the base image will be updated to target the latest version.

All of the details are available at http://www.minizinc.org/challenge2021/challenge.html.

Key dates

• Registration opens: Now.
• Problem submission deadline: Fri, 9 July 2021.
• Initial submission round begins: Mon, 9 August 2021.
• Initial submission round ends: Fri, 27 August 2021.
• Final submissions: Fri, 24 September 2021.
• Announcement of results at CP2021: 25-29 October (Montpellier, France).

The aim of the challenge is 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.

Challenge participants 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 MiniZinc compiler on the MiniZinc model and instance using the provided global constraint definitions to create a FlatZinc file. The resultant FlatZinc file is then given as input to the provided FlatZinc solver. For MiniZinc solvers, the MiniZinc model and data are input to the provided solver. Points are awarded for solving problems, speed of solution, and goodness of solutions (for optimization problems).