SUNNY-CP and the MiniZinc Challenge

In Constraint Programming (CP) a portfolio solver combines a variety of different constraint solvers for solving a given problem. This fairly recent approach enables to significantly boost the performance of single solvers, especially when multicore architectures are exploited. In this work we give a brief overview of the portfolio solver sunny-cp, and we discuss its performance in the MiniZinc Challenge—the annual international competition for CP solvers—where it won two gold medals in 2015 and 2016. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)