CUTEr (Constrained and Unconstrained Testing Environment, revisited) is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

testing environment for

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

and

linear algebra Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning linear equations such as: :a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n=b, linear maps such as: :(x_1, \ldots, x_n) \mapsto a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n, and their representations in vector spaces and through matrices. ...

solver A solver is a piece of mathematical software, possibly in the form of a stand-alone computer program or as a software library, that 'solves' a mathematical problem. A solver takes problem descriptions in some sort of generic form and calculates t ...

s. CUTEr provides a collection of test problems along with a set of tools to help developers design, compare, and improve new and existing test problem solvers. CUTEr is the successor of the original Constrained and Unconstrained Testing Environment (CUTE) of Bongartz, Conn, Gould and Toint. It provides support for a larger number of platforms and operating systems as well as a more convenient optimization toolbox. The test problems provided in CUTEr are written in Standard Input Format (SIF). A decoder to convert from this format into well-defined subroutines and data files is available as a separate package. Once translated, these files may be manipulated to provide tools suitable for testing optimization packages. Ready-to-use interfaces to existing packages, such as

IPOPT IPOPT, short for "Interior Point OPTimizer, pronounced I-P-Opt", is a software library for large scale nonlinear optimization of continuous systems. It is written in Fortran and C and is released under the EPL (formerly CPL). IPOPT implement ...

MINOSKnitro
and more are provided. The problems in the CUTE subset are also available in the

AMPL AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) is an algebraic modeling language to describe and solve high-complexity problems for large-scale mathematical computing (i.e., large-scale optimization and scheduling-type problems). It was developed b ...

format. More than 1000 problems are available in the collection, including problems in: *

linear programming Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear function#As a polynomial function, li ...

, *convex and nonconvex

quadratic programming Quadratic programming (QP) is the process of solving certain mathematical optimization problems involving quadratic functions. Specifically, one seeks to optimize (minimize or maximize) a multivariate quadratic function subject to linear constra ...

, *linear and nonlinear

least squares The method of least squares is a standard approach in regression analysis to approximate the solution of overdetermined systems (sets of equations in which there are more equations than unknowns) by minimizing the sum of the squares of the res ...

, and *more general convex and nonconvex large-scale and sparse equality and inequality-constrained

nonlinear programming In mathematics, nonlinear programming (NLP) is the process of solving an optimization problem where some of the constraints or the objective function are nonlinear. An optimization problem is one of calculation of the extrema (maxima, minima or sta ...

. Over time, the CUTEr test set has become the ''de facto'' standard benchmark for research and production-level optimization solvers, and is used and cited in numerous published research articles. The SIF is a

superset In mathematics, set ''A'' is a subset of a set ''B'' if all elements of ''A'' are also elements of ''B''; ''B'' is then a superset of ''A''. It is possible for ''A'' and ''B'' to be equal; if they are unequal, then ''A'' is a proper subset of ...

of the original MPS format for

and of its extension QPS for

. Therefore, access to problem collections such as th
Netlib
linear programs and th
Maros and Meszaros
convex quadratic programs is possible. Moreover, the collection covers the Argonne test set, the Hock and Schittkowski collection,W. Hock and K. Schittkowski, Test Examples for Nonlinear Programming Codes, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Vol. 187, Springer 1981. the Dembo network problems, the Gould QPs, and others. CUTEr is available on a variety of

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

platforms, including

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, and is designed to be accessible and easily manageable on heterogeneous networks.

References

;Notes *N. I. M. Gould, D. Orban and Ph. L. Toint, ''CUTEr (and SifDec): a Constrained and Unconstrained Testing Environment, revisited'', ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 29:4, pp 373–394, 2003.

External links

* Th
official CUTEr website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cuter Numerical software Mathematical optimization software