[HN Gopher] A New Library for Network Optimization
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       A New Library for Network Optimization
        
       Author : chmaynard
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2022-02-22 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (opensource.googleblog.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (opensource.googleblog.com)
        
       | runnerup wrote:
       | Minimal documentation is included here. I'd like to read the
       | associate paper/presentation to get a better sense of its
       | abilities but it hasn't been posted yet.
        
         | zzleeper wrote:
         | For all practical purposes, posting that code without an actual
         | guide/readme and without the paper is useless. What are they
         | solving, how is it better than xyz alternative, etc.
        
         | sva_ wrote:
         | Here you go:
         | 
         | https://www.aaai.org/AAAI22Papers/AAAI-21.MoffittM.pdf
         | 
         | https://aaai-2022.virtualchair.net/poster_aaai21
         | 
         | As a sidenote, that website's search engine is hilariously bad.
         | Just freezes up for no reason.
        
       | quocanh wrote:
       | I didn't know communication networks could be described with
       | resistors. Are inductors, diodes, and voltage sources also
       | relevant? How far does this go and why would you model networks
       | this way?
        
         | uoaei wrote:
         | [1] has a potential use case. Resistor networks are handy when
         | modeling divergence-free flows through arbitrary networks with
         | linear "costs" from a predefined origin to a predefined
         | destination.
         | 
         | Kirchoff's law and Ohm's law makes things linear, and turning
         | the optimization problem into a linear problem is very
         | advantageous for efficiency.
         | 
         | Diodes are asymmetric resistors with R=0 for one direction and
         | R=inf for the other, so represent one-way streets in the
         | network. A voltage source would be how you define the origin
         | location (destination location is set at ground) for
         | recognizing different routes for flows to take. Inductors are
         | out of scope I think since this should find the equilibrium for
         | voltages at each node and currents across each resistor.
         | 
         | [1] https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/02/robust-routing-using-
         | elect...
        
       | graycat wrote:
       | What _optimization_ problem is being solved?
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-22 23:01 UTC)