Assignment: Scipy vs Cplex

I have never used this routine [1], so lets give this a try. This is a Python implementation of the Hungarian method [2]. The call is exceedingly simple: just give it the cost matrix.

The algorithm allows unbalanced assignment problems by just specifying a rectangular cost matrix. Typically, unbalanced problems are transformed into balanced ones by adding source or destination nodes.

I believe the description is slightly inaccurate:

Description from Scipy.org

This would allow zero assignments, i.e. \(x_{i,j}=0\). It is not always easy to create a watertight English description.

Let's try a problem.

When we feed a random problem with 1,000 sources and 1,000 destinations, we see the following timings:



We first read in the data (organized as lists). The second step is to convert this to a NumPy array (otherwise this is done automatically by linear_sum_assignment). Then we solve the problem. On my laptop this takes about 325 seconds.

We can formulate this problem as an LP:\[\begin{align}\min \> & \sum_{i,j} c_{i,j} x_{i,j}\\ & \sum_j x_{i,j} = 1 && \forall i \\ & \sum_i x_{i,j} =1 && \forall j \\ & x_{i,j} \ge 0 \end{align}\]

When we feed this into Cplex we see:

Parallel mode: deterministic, using up to 4 threads for concurrent optimization. Tried aggregator 1 time. LP Presolve eliminated 2 rows and 1 columns. Reduced LP has 1999 rows, 1000000 columns, and 1999000 nonzeros. Presolve time = 5.95 sec. (770.92 ticks) Initializing dual steep norms . . . Iteration log . . . Iteration:     1   Dual objective     =             1.007485 Iteration:  1113   Dual objective     =             1.661162 Dual simplex solved model. LP status(1): optimal Cplex Time: 14.91sec (det. 2309.10 ticks)

Cplex tries several LP algorithms in parallel (concurrent optimization). It turns out Dual Simplex wins. The total solution time is about 15 seconds. So Cplex is 20 times as fast.

We can actually improve on this a bit. This is a network problem, so we can use the Network solver. In addition, we disable the presolver (it is somewhat expensive and does little for this problem).

Extracted network with 2002 nodes and 1000001 arcs. Extraction time = 0.63 sec. (49.15 ticks) Iteration log . . . Iteration:     0   Infeasibility     =          2000.000000 (2000) Iteration: 10000   Infeasibility     =             0.000000 (7.62808) Iteration: 20000   Objective         =             5.108089 Iteration: 30000   Objective         =             3.842909 Iteration: 40000   Objective         =             3.147366 Iteration: 50000   Objective         =             2.622157 Iteration: 60000   Objective         =             2.275971 Iteration: 70000   Objective         =             1.990956 Iteration: 80000   Objective         =             1.790689 Elapsed time = 1.33 sec. (82.13 ticks) Iteration: 90000   Objective         =             1.684441 Network - Optimal:  Objective =    1.6701729950e+00 Network time = 1.67 sec. (119.82 ticks)  Iterations = 92769 (10000) LP status(1): optimal Cplex Time: 2.66sec (det. 236.01 ticks)

Now we need only less than 3 seconds (Cplex is 120 times as fast as Scipy).

We would normally expect a specialized assignment solver to do better than a general purpose LP solver. However, Cplex is a highly polished product and we run on the bare metal. Using Python and a simpler implementation just causes us to lose. Note that there are specialized solvers that are much faster.

Some solvers in Scipy are a little bit underwhelming. Examples are the linear programming simplex solver and, as we saw here, the assignment problem solver.