Solving large scale semidefinite programs via an iterative solver on the augmented systems

Abstract

The search directions in an interior-point method for large scale semidefinite programming (SDP) can be computed by applying a Krylov iterative method to either the Schur complement equation (SCE) or the augmented equation. Both methods suffer from slow convergence as interior-point iterates approach optimality. Numerical experiments have shown that a diagonally preconditioned conjugate residual method on the SCE typically takes a huge number of steps to converge. However, it is difficult to incorporate cheap and effective preconditioners into the SCE. This paper proposes to apply the preconditioned symmetric quasi-minimal residual (PSQMR) method to a reduced augmented equation that is derived from the augmented equation by utilizing the eigenvalue structure of the interior-point iterates. Numerical experiments on SDP problems arising from maximum clique and selected SDPLIB (SDP Library) problems show that moderately accurate solutions can be obtained with a modest number of PSQMR steps using the proposed preconditioned reduced augmented equation. An SDP problem with 127600 constraints is solved in about 6.5 hours to an accuracy of 10 -6 in relative duality gap.