On the parallel solution of dense saddle-point linear systems arising in stochastic programming

We present a novel approach for solving dense saddle-point linear systems in a distributed-memory environment. This work is motivated by an application in stochastic optimization problems with recourse, but the proposed approach can be used for a large family of dense saddle-point systems, in particular those arising in convex programming. Although stochastic optimization problems have … Read more

SpeeDP: A new algorithm to compute the SDP relaxations of Max-Cut for very large graphs

We consider low-rank semidefinite programming (LRSDP) relaxations of unconstrained {-1,1} quadratic problems (or, equivalently, of Max-Cut problems) that can be formulated as the nonconvex nonlinear programming problem of minimizing a quadratic function subject to separable quadratic equality constraints. We prove the equivalence of the LRSDP problem with the unconstrained minimization of a new merit function … Read more

Portfolio Selection under Model Uncertainty: A Penalized Moment-Based Optimization Approach

We present a new approach for portfolio selection when the underlying distribution of asset returns is uncertain or ambiguous to investors. In particular, we consider the case that an investor can formulate some reference financial models based on his/her prior beliefs or information, but is concerned about misspecification of the reference models and the associated … Read more

Comparing SOS and SDP relaxations of sensor network localization

We investigate the relationships between various sum of squares (SOS) and semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for the sensor network localization problem. In particular, we show that Biswas and Ye’s SDP relaxation is equivalent to the degree one SOS relaxation of Kim et al. We also show that Nie’s sparse-SOS relaxation is stronger than the edge-based … Read more

An Introduction to a Class of Matrix Cone Programming

In this paper, we define a class of linear conic programming (which we call matrix cone programming or MCP) involving the epigraphs of five commonly used matrix norms and the well studied symmetric cone. MCP has recently found many important applications, for example, in nuclear norm relaxations of affine rank minimization problems. In order to … Read more

Burer’s Key Assumption for Semidefinite and Doubly Nonnegative Relaxations

Burer has shown that completely positive relaxations of nonconvex quadratic programs with nonnegative and binary variables are exact when the binary variables satisfy a so-called key assumption. Here we show that introducing binary variables to obtain an equivalent problem that satisfies the key assumption will not improve the semidefinite relaxation, and only marginally improve the … Read more

Templates for Convex Cone Problems with Applications to Sparse Signal Recovery

This paper develops a general framework for solving a variety of convex cone problems that frequently arise in signal processing, machine learning, statistics, and other fi elds. The approach works as follows: first, determine a conic formulation of the problem; second, determine its dual; third, apply smoothing; and fourth, solve using an optimal first-order method. A … Read more

On duality gap in linear conic problems

In their paper “Duality of linear conic problems” A. Shapiro and A. Nemirovski considered two possible properties (A) and (B) for dual linear conic problems (P) and (D). The property (A) is “If either (P) or (D) is feasible, then there is no duality gap between (P) and (D)”, while property (B) is “If both … Read more

Parallel solver for semidefinite programming problem having sparse Schur complement matrix

SemiDefinite Programming (SDP) problem is one of the most central problems in mathematical programming. SDP provides a practical computation framework for many research fields. Some applications, however, require solving large-scale SDPs whose size exceeds the capacity of a single processor in terms of computational time and available memory. SDPARA (SemiDefinite Programming Algorithm paRAllel version) developed … Read more

Semidefinite Relaxations for Non-Convex Quadratic Mixed-Integer Programming

We present semidefinite relaxations for unconstrained non-convex quadratic mixed-integer optimization problems. These relaxations yield tight bounds and are computationally easy to solve for medium-sized instances, even if some of the variables are integer and unbounded. In this case, the problem contains an infinite number of linear constraints; these constraints are separated dynamically. We use this … Read more