MADAM: a parallel exact solver for max-cut based on semidefinite programming and ADMM

We present , a parallel semidefinite-based exact solver for Max-Cut, a problem of finding the cut with the maximum weight in a given graph. The algorithm uses the branch and bound paradigm that applies the alternating direction method of multipliers as the bounding routine to solve the basic semidefinite relaxation strengthened by a subset of hypermetric inequalities. The benefit of the new approach is a less computationally expensive update rule for the dual variable with respect to the inequality constraints. We provide a theoretical convergence of the algorithm as well as extensive computational experiments with this method, to show that our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art approaches. Furthermore, by combining algorithmic ingredients from the serial algorithm, we develop an efficient distributed parallel solver based on MPI.