FMIP: Joint Continuous-Integer Flow For Mixed-Integer Linear Programming

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Hongpei, Yuan, Hui, Zhang, Han, Lin, Jianghao, Ge, Dongdong, Wang, Mengdi, Ye, Yinyu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Li, Hongpei
Yuan, Hui
Zhang, Han
Lin, Jianghao
Ge, Dongdong
Wang, Mengdi
Ye, Yinyu
author_facet Li, Hongpei
Yuan, Hui
Zhang, Han
Lin, Jianghao
Ge, Dongdong
Wang, Mengdi
Ye, Yinyu
contents Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is a foundational tool for complex decision-making problems. However, the NP-hard nature of MILP presents a significant computational challenge, motivating the development of machine learning-based heuristic solutions to accelerate downstream solvers. While recent generative models have shown promise in learning powerful heuristics, they suffer from a critical limitation. That is, they model the distribution of only the integer variables and fail to capture the intricate coupling between integer and continuous variables, creating an information bottleneck and ultimately leading to suboptimal solutions. To this end, we propose Joint Continuous-Integer Flow for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (FMIP), which is the first generative framework that models the joint distribution of both integer and continuous variables for MILP solutions. Built upon the joint modeling paradigm, a holistic guidance mechanism is designed to steer the generative trajectory, actively refining solutions toward optimality and feasibility during the inference process. Extensive experiments on eight standard MILP benchmarks demonstrate the superior performance of FMIP against existing baselines, reducing the primal gap by 41.34% on average. Moreover, we show that FMIP is fully compatible with arbitrary backbone networks and various downstream solvers, making it well-suited for a broad range of real-world MILP applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_23390
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FMIP: Joint Continuous-Integer Flow For Mixed-Integer Linear Programming
Li, Hongpei
Yuan, Hui
Zhang, Han
Lin, Jianghao
Ge, Dongdong
Wang, Mengdi
Ye, Yinyu
Optimization and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is a foundational tool for complex decision-making problems. However, the NP-hard nature of MILP presents a significant computational challenge, motivating the development of machine learning-based heuristic solutions to accelerate downstream solvers. While recent generative models have shown promise in learning powerful heuristics, they suffer from a critical limitation. That is, they model the distribution of only the integer variables and fail to capture the intricate coupling between integer and continuous variables, creating an information bottleneck and ultimately leading to suboptimal solutions. To this end, we propose Joint Continuous-Integer Flow for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (FMIP), which is the first generative framework that models the joint distribution of both integer and continuous variables for MILP solutions. Built upon the joint modeling paradigm, a holistic guidance mechanism is designed to steer the generative trajectory, actively refining solutions toward optimality and feasibility during the inference process. Extensive experiments on eight standard MILP benchmarks demonstrate the superior performance of FMIP against existing baselines, reducing the primal gap by 41.34% on average. Moreover, we show that FMIP is fully compatible with arbitrary backbone networks and various downstream solvers, making it well-suited for a broad range of real-world MILP applications.
title FMIP: Joint Continuous-Integer Flow For Mixed-Integer Linear Programming
topic Optimization and Control
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23390