We are happy to announce the results of PACE 2026. Congratulations to the winners and all the participants!
Experimental setup
- Evaluation was carried out using SDU’s uCloud servers:
- Lenovo ThinkSystem SR645 V3
- 2x AMD EPYC 9534 64-Core @ 2.45Ghz (at most 96 cores used due to limited RAM)
- 1536 GB DDR5-4800 RAM
- Each track contains 400 instances (see details on selection)
- Each solver is evaluated thrice on random (but identical) machines in their own container, each time working on all 400 instances.
- Thus each solver can score a total of 1200 points
Exact Track
| Rank | Stud Rank | Solver | Authors | Solved | Runtime | Score | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | maffe | Anton Hoof, Tobias Röhr | 1063 | 35043.6s | 1063 | |
| 2 | woodcutter | Johannes Varga, Enrico Iurlano, Hai Xia | 1056 | 31544.8s | 1056 | -7 | |
| 3 | 2 | klados | Christian Inhetveen, Marcin Mennemann, Marius Maximilian Hille | 866 | 117499.0s | 866 | -190 |
| 4 | TreeOfLife | Jonas Seiler | 691 | 80836.2s | 691 | -175 | |
| 5 | sherby | Nicolas Bousquet, Bertrand Marchand, Arnaud Mary, Sven Meyer | 648 | 94248.6s | 648 | -43 | |
| 6 | 3 | Rens | Rens | 584 | 35258.2s | 584 | -64 |
| 7 | 4 | uni-bremen | Jonas Schramm, Philip Kail, Jurin Hoffmann, Alexander Wachowski, Leon Flaack, André Kaufmann, Florian Feegel | 575 | 46271.0s | 575 | -9 |
| 8 | 5 | LazyBunch | Ábel Galambos, Márton Tot Bagi | 544 | 35948.3s | 544 | -31 |
| 9 | 6 | CherryPicker 2 | Rishank Goyal, Srinibas Swain | 495 | 158555.7s | 495 | -49 |
| 10 | UiB AlgoRythm | Juni Weisteen Bjerde, Wim Van den Broeck, Krishnan Dehaleesan, Yash Hiren More, Jakob Rødal Skaar, Tomáš Turek, Sam Urmian | 493 | 57640.0s | 493 | -2 | |
| 11 | UiB AlgoRhythm | Juni Weisteen Bjerde, Wim Van den Broeck, Krishnan Dehaleesan, Yash Hiren More, Jakob Rødal Skaar , Tomáš Turek, Sam Urmian | 334 | 98215.8s | 334 | -159 | |
| 12 | 7 | tospfrepe | Tobias Gad SpoorenDonk and Frederik Petersen | 318 | 32956.2s | 318 | -16 |
| 13 | 8 | NeckarCut | David Koch, Henning Woydt | 253 | 30012.4s | 253 | -65 |
| 14 | Biahos | Biahos | 137 | 45872.8s | 137 | -116 | |
| (WD) | PAAS | Shannon Gibbson | 843 | 225043.8s | (843) | ||
| (DQ) | CUFE | Michael Ibrahim | 1197 (783) | 66226.5s | (414) | ||
| (DQ) (WD) | AAI | Mohamed Mahmoud Abdelwahab, Faisal Abu-Khzam, Lucas Isenmann | 1083 (918) | 1780929.6s | (279) | ||
| (DQ) (LS) | ClusterLuck | Rishank Goyal, Srinibas Swain | 648 (22) | 192511.5s | (626) |
(WD): authors withdrew submission, (LS): code was submitted after deadline, (DQ): solver produced illegal solutions (number indicated in brackets in column Solved)
Heuristic Track
| Rank | Stud Rank | Solver | Authors | Solved | Runtime | Score | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | maffe | Anton Hoof, Tobias Röhr | 1197 | 155934.5s | 1195.883 | |
| 2 | 2 | searchsPACE | Manuel Ronhaar | 1199 | 142675.5s | 1195.429 | -0.453 |
| 3 | 3 | Dakopen | Daniel Busch | 1200 | 198280.9s | 1195.042 | -0.388 |
| 4 | 4 | CherryPicker 1 | Jakub Dziura, Tomáš Masařík | 1200 | 359996.7s | 1194.889 | -0.153 |
| 5 | woodcutter | Johannes Varga, Enrico Iurlano, Hai Xia | 1199 | 240010.3s | 1185.549 | -9.340 | |
| 6 | 5 | klados | Christian Inhetveen, Marcin Mennemann, Marius Maximilian Hille | 1181 | 201259.6s | 1171.784 | -13.764 |
| 7 | 6 | MAFia 1 | Smithin J Raj, Fahad Ali Habeeb, Ashwin Jacob | 1200 | 357318.7s | 1153.212 | -18.572 |
| 8 | Bocconi | Adam Polak | 1200 | 359277.9s | 1128.662 | -24.550 | |
| 9 | 7 | MAFia 2 | Rishank Goyal, Shrey Sharma, Srinibas Swain | 1200 | 352890.9s | 1108.313 | -20.349 |
| 10 | 8 | pace_nitw | Aadit Nair, Anish Deodhar, Sumit Mishra | 1200 | 87077.4s | 1099.483 | -8.830 |
| 11 | monet | Xinyu Wang, Chenghao Zhu, Yi Zhou, Yiping Liu | 1200 | 349044.0s | 1047.690 | -51.793 | |
| 12 | axs | Xinyu Wang, Chenghao Zhu, Yi Zhou, Yiping Liu | 1200 | 352805.3s | 1005.309 | -42.382 | |
| 13 | UiB AlgoRythm | Juni Weisteen Bjerde, Wim Van den Broeck, Krishnan Dehaleesan, Yash Hiren More, Jakob Rødal Skaar, Tomáš Turek, Sam Urmian | 1200 | 333554.0s | 955.871 | -49.438 | |
| 14 | Panda Squad | Liam and Narges | 1200 | 355209.9s | 892.614 | -63.257 | |
| 15 | 9 | uni-bremen | Jonas Schramm, Philip Kail, Jurin Hoffmann, Alexander Wachowski, Leon Flaack, André Kaufmann, Florian Feegel | 1200 | 333864.5s | 745.070 | -147.544 |
| 16 | DeltaSearch | Arnav Bajjuri, Farhana Akter Tumpa, Rebin Silva Valan Arasu, Rajiv Gupta | 1200 | 359996.5s | 549.953 | -195.117 | |
| 17 | Biahos | Biahos | 1200 | 346845.0s | 546.907 | -3.046 | |
| (DQ) | CUFE | Michael Ibrahim | 1193 (7) | 299440.9s | (993.142) |
(DQ): solver produced illegal solutions (number indicated in brackets in column Solved)
Lower Bound
| Rank | Stud Rank | Solver | Authors | Solved | Runtime | Score | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | maffe | Anton Hoof, Tobias Röhr | 1128 | 6785.4s | 1122.438 | |
| 2 | 2 | CherryPicker 1 | Jakub Dziura, Tomáš Masařík | 1104 | 21721.2s | 1086.196 | -36.242 |
| 3 | 3 | searchsPACE | Manuel Ronhaar | 1107 | 26028.5s | 1085.665 | -0.531 |
| 4 | 4 | klados | Christian Inhetveen, Marcin Mennemann, Marius Maximilian Hille | 1045 | 20434.0s | 1028.251 | -57.414 |
| 5 | woodcutter | Johannes Varga, Enrico Iurlano, Hai Xia | 993 | 38677.7s | 961.297 | -66.954 | |
| 6 | 5 | uni-bremen-lb | Jonas Schramm, Philip Kail, Jurin Hoffmann, Alexander Wachowski, Leon Flaack, André Kaufmann, Florian Feegel | 228 | 6513.0s | 222.661 | -738.635 |
| 7 | 6 | uni-bremen | Jonas Schramm, Philip Kail, Jurin Hoffmann, Alexander Wachowski, Leon Flaack, André Kaufmann, Florian Feegel | 222 | 4741.5s | 218.114 | -4.548 |
| (DQ) | CutSetGo | Rishank Goyal, Srinibas Swain | 786 (1) | 65813.0s | (732.055) | ||
| (DQ) | CUFE | Michael Ibrahim | 465 (735) | 395.7s | (464.942) | ||
| (DQ) | Biahos | Biahos | 671 (529) | 689204.2s | (361.490) |
(DQ): solver produced illegal solutions (number indicated in brackets in column Solved)
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the computing time provided by
- UCloud interactive HPC system, which is managed by the eScience Center at the University of Southern Denmark, and
- the NHR Center NHR@SW at Goethe University Frankfurt.