PACE 2025

Problems

This year features two problems.

  1. Dominating Set
  2. Hitting Set

Timeline

Submission Guideline

We ask all participants to publish their codebase and solver description on Github or a similar platform that is publicly available. The following files are required.

The deadlines mentioned above apply. Note that changes on the codebase and the solver description after their respective deadlines are prohibited, except for small changes resulting from the reviewing phase in close contact with the organizers. We kindly ask all participants to send us an email by the submission deadline, including a link to their Github repository (or a similar platform). If your submission is eligible for the student ranking, please also include a brief note indicating this.

Scoring

We will use the following scoring system. For the exact tracks as well the heuristic tracks a maximum of 100 points can be achieved. Note that this system is not used on optil.

Scoring

Preliminary leaderboard on optil

The preliminary leaderboard on optil is now live. You can submit your solvers on this platform and compare your results with the solvers of other participants.

Instances

You find the set of public instances on Github.

Evaluation and correctness of exact solvers

This year we will take special efforts to ensure the correctness of the exact solvers.

FAQ

Is there a leaderboard for submissions where students are the main contributors?
Yes. For each problem and track there is a global ranking as well as a student ranking, that is, 8 leaderboards in total. The student ranking is only eligible for submission where students are the main contributors, for example, teams of student being part of a student project. These student groups may be supervised by non-student people as long as the students are the main contributors. If your submission is eligible for the student ranking, please send a short mail to the program committee.

Are external solvers allowed?
The use of external solvers such as ILP solvers, SAT solvers, etc, is allowed and encouraged, provided they are non-commercial and not subject to licenses that restrict the free distribution of your solvers.

What are the specs of the machine the final evaluation is done? Are parallel, multi-threaded algorithms allowed?
For each solver, we provide 16 GB of memory and a single thread, as we believe that the focus of the competition is novel algorithm engineering instead of parallel programming. We encourage all teams to configure their software to be single-threaded to obtain results as representative as possible.

How many submissions per team are allowed?
We allow three submission per team. However, we allow exceptions for big students groups. For example, for a student group of 10 people divided into 2 (more or less independent) subgroups of 5 students each, we allow both subgroups to submit three solvers each. However, the ranking will be per team, not per solver. If you are unsure, feel free to contact us.

Are the private instances similar to the public instances?
Yes. The private instances have similar structural properties and sizes as the public instances.

If you have further questions feel free to contact us via mail or write a ticket on Github.

Program Committee