SCS

Julia wrapper for the SCS splitting cone solver. SCS can solve linear programs, second-order cone programs, semidefinite programs, exponential cone programs, and power cone programs.

Installation

You can install SCS.jl through the Julia package manager:

julia> Pkg.add("SCS")

SCS.jl will use BinaryProvider.jl to automatically install the SCS binaries. Note that if you are not using the official Julia binaries from https://julialang.org/downloads/ you may need a custom install of the SCS binaries.

Custom Installation

To install custom built SCS binaries set the environmental variable JULIA_SCS_LIBRARY_PATH and call Pkg.build("SCS"). For instance, if the libraries are installed in /opt/lib just call

ENV["JULIA_SCS_LIBRARY_PATH"]="/opt/lib"
Pkg.build("SCS")

Note that your custom build binaries need to be compiled with the option DLONG=1. For instance, a minimal compilation script would be

$ cd <scs_dir>
$ make DLONG=1
$ julia
julia> ENV["JULIA_SCS_LIBRARY_PATH"]="<scs_dir>/out"
] build SCS

where <scs_dir> is SCS's source directory.

If you do not want BinaryProvider to download the default binaries on install set JULIA_SCS_LIBRARY_PATH before calling Pkg.add("SCS").

To switch back to the default binaries clear JULIA_SCS_LIBRARY_PATH and call Pkg.build("SCS").

Usage

MathProgBase wrapper

SCS implements the solver-independent MathProgBase interface, and so can be used within modeling software like Convex and JuMP. The solver object is called SCSSolver.

Options

All SCS solver options can be set through the direct interface(documented below) and through MathProgBase. The list of options is defined the scs.h header. To use these settings you can either pass them as keyword arguments to SCS_solve (high level interface) or as arguments to the SCSSolver constructor (MathProgBase interface), e.g.

# Direct
solution = SCS_solve(m, n, A, ..., psize; max_iters=10, verbose=0);
# MathProgBase (with Convex)
m = solve!(problem, SCSSolver(max_iters=10, verbose=0))

Moreover, You may select one of the linear solvers to be used by SCSSolver via linear_solver keyword. The options available are SCS.Indirect (the default) and SCS.Direct.

High level wrapper

The file high_level_wrapper.jl is thoroughly commented. Here is the basic usage

We assume we are solving a problem of the form

minimize        c' * x
subject to      A * x + s = b
                s in K

where K is a product cone of

zero cones,
linear cones { x | x >= 0 },
second-order cones { (t,x) | ||x||_2 <= t },
semi-definite cones { X | X psd },
exponential cones {(x,y,z) | y e^(x/y) <= z, y>0 }, and
power cone {(x,y,z) | x^a * y^(1-a) >= |z|, x>=0, y>=0}.

The problem data are

A is the matrix with m rows and n cols
b is of length m x 1
c is of length n x 1
f is the number of primal zero / dual free cones, i.e. primal equality constraints
l is the number of linear cones
q is the array of SOCs sizes
s is the array of SDCs sizes
ep is the number of primal exponential cones
ed is the number of dual exponential cones
p is the array of power cone parameters
options is a dictionary of options (see above).

The function is

function SCS_solve(m::Int, n::Int, A::SCSVecOrMatOrSparse, b::Array{Float64,},
    c::Array{Float64,}, f::Int, l::Int, q::Array{Int,}, qsize::Int, s::Array{Int,},
    ssize::Int, ep::Int, ed::Int, p::Array{Float64,}, psize::Int; options...)

and it returns an object of type Solution, which contains the following fields

type Solution
  x::Array{Float64, 1}
  y::Array{Float64, 1}
  s::Array{Float64, 1}
  status::ASCIIString
  ret_val::Int
  ...

Where x stores the optimal value of the primal variable, y stores the optimal value of the dual variable, s is the slack variable, status gives information such as solved, primal infeasible, etc.

Low level wrapper

The low level wrapper directly calls SCS and is also thoroughly documented in low_level_wrapper.jl. The low level wrapper performs the pointer manipulation necessary for the direct C call.

Convex and JuMP examples

This example shows how we can model a simple knapsack problem with Convex and use SCS to solve it.

using Convex, SCS
items  = [:Gold, :Silver, :Bronze]
values = [5.0, 3.0, 1.0]
weights = [2.0, 1.5, 0.3]

# Define a variable of size 3, each index representing an item
x = Variable(3)
p = maximize(x' * values, 0 <= x, x <= 1, x' * weights <= 3)
solve!(p, SCSSolver())
println([items x.value])

# [:Gold 0.9999971880377178
#  :Silver 0.46667637765641057
#  :Bronze 0.9999998036351865]

This example shows how we can model a simple knapsack problem with JuMP and use SCS to solve it.

using JuMP, SCS
items  = [:Gold, :Silver, :Bronze]
values = Dict(:Gold => 5.0,  :Silver => 3.0,  :Bronze => 1.0)
weight = Dict(:Gold => 2.0,  :Silver => 1.5,  :Bronze => 0.3)

m = Model(solver=SCSSolver())
@variable(m, 0 <= take[items] <= 1)  # Define a variable for each item
@objective(m, Max, sum( values[item] * take[item] for item in items))
@constraint(m, sum( weight[item] * take[item] for item in items) <= 3)
solve(m)
println(getvalue(take))
# [Bronze] = 0.9999999496295456
# [  Gold] = 0.99999492720597
# [Silver] = 0.4666851698368782

guilhermebodin/SCS.jl

SCS