Call for Solvers and Benchmarks
Fourth International Constraint Solver Competition
(CSP, Max-CSP and Weighted-CSP competition)
http://cpai.ucc.ie/09/

The Fourth International Constraint Solver Competition (CSC'2009) is organised to improve our knowledge of what is behind the efficiency of constraint satisfaction algorithms, heuristics, solving strategies, and constraint systems. CSC'2008, the third edition of the competition, considered the CSP and the Max-CSP and problem instances consisting of binary and non-binary, extensional and intensional constraints, as well as a few global constraints. CSC'2009 further extends the scope by introducing the Weighted-CSP (WCSP) problem and by allowing any global constraint defined on integer variables, provided the constraint has been requested by some contestant. To propose a direction for contestants, the competition organizers have selected 10 central global constraints (eight of them identified by Nicolas Beldiceanu). A list of these constraints is provided on Page . However, solvers will also be evaluated for other kinds of contestant-proposed global constraints that they support. As already indicated, constraints are only used if they are supported by some contestant's solver. To indicate that their solver supports a given global constraint contestants should formally request the global constraint and submit at least 20 problem instances with this global constraint.

The changes with respect to CSC'2008 have some implication on the ranking of the solvers. This is explained in Section 9.

As a summary, CSC'2009 will consider CSP, Max-CSP and WCSP problems, constraints defined in extension, constraints in intension, and any kind of global constraints defined on integer variables.

To participate to the competition, it is not necessary to submit a solver which can deal with all kinds of constraints and all problems. Submitting a solver which is capable of dealing with only one kind of constraint (e.g. binary, extensional constraints) and one kind of CSP(e.g. ordinary CSP) is also allowed. The only requirement is that the solver must indicate when it has no support for a given kind of constraint.

The remainder of this call for solvers and benchmarks presents (1) the problems and categories that will be considered during the competition, (2) details about the representation of CSP instances, (3) the execution environment, and (4) the rules.

A printable version of this call may be found at http://cpai.ucc.ie/09/call2009.pdf. A short version may be found at http://cpai.ucc.ie/09/call2009.