Statistically Optimal Combination of Algorithms

Automatic specialization of algorithms to a limited domain is an interesting and industrially applicable problem. We calculate the optimal assignment of computational resources to several different solvers that solve the same problem. Optimality is considered with regard to the expected solution time on a set of problem instances from the domain of interest. We present two approaches, a static and dynamic one. The static approach leads to a simple analytically calculable solution. The dynamic approach results in formulation of the problem as a Markov Decision Process. Our tests on the SAT Problem show that the presented methods are quite effective. Therefore, both methods are attractive for applications and future research.