[SCIP] About variances in solving time

[Bayramoglu, Selin]

Hello,

I have a question regarding the timing of algorithms. I am recording the solving times of SCIP on 100 problems. My end goal is to compare SCIP under different configurations. I am running my experiments on a dedicated 48-core virtual machine. I have run these problems in two settings:

1.      Submit a single job which solves the problems sequentially on a single core. I did not submit any other job, but the machine has regular processes going on in the background.
2.      Submit 100 jobs and use all cores of the machine. The jobs get assigned to different cores of the machine and run in parallel.

I use HTCondor for scheduling jobs. I observed that the solving time can go up by up to 70% in case 2 compared to case 1. In addition, running case 1 several times gives very consistent runtimes, but the runtimes vary a lot more in case 2.

I was wondering if there are certain measures to take so that timing values are stable (one can guarantee to get the a similar solving time for every run on the same problem) and are short. Even though the results from case 1 are satisfactory, it is highly time consuming to run all jobs on a single core and keep the remaining 47 cores idle.

I would be happy to take any suggestions on this matter.

Thanks.

Selin Bayramoglu
Ph.D. Student
H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
sbayramoglu3 at gatech.edu<mailto:sbayramoglu3 at gatech.edu>
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