MiniZinc Challenge 2024: Call for participation and problems

[jason.nguyen]

We are inviting all solver developers to enter their solvers into the annual MiniZinc Challenge for 2024!

To register and enter your solver, visit the online portal at https://challenge.minizinc.org.

All of the details are available at https://www.minizinc.org/challenge/2024/.

We're also still accepting problem submissions until Fri, 28 June 2024. See how to submit at https://www.minizinc.org/challenge/2024/call_for_problems/.

Key dates

• Registration opens: Now
• Problem submission deadline: Fri, 28 June 2024.
• Solver submission begins: Now.
• Solver submission deadline: Fri, 2 August 2024.
• Announcement of results at CP2024: 2 - 6 September 2024 (Girona, Catalonia) .

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).