Ipopt Documentation
Special Features

# Derivative Checker

When writing code for the evaluation of derivatives it is very easy to make mistakes (much easier than writing it correctly the first time :)). As a convenient feature, Ipopt provides the option to run a simple derivative checker, based on finite differences, before the optimization is started.

To use the derivative checker, you need to use the option derivative_test. By default, this option is set to none, i.e., no finite difference test is performed. If it is set to first-order, then the first derivatives of the objective function and the constraints are verified, and for the setting second-order, the second derivatives are tested as well.

The verification is done by a simple finite differences approximation, where each component of the user-provided starting point is perturbed one of the other. The relative size of the perturbation is determined by the option derivative_test_perturbation. The default value (10-8, about the square root of the machine precision) is probably fine in most cases, but if you believe that you see wrong warnings, you might want to play with this parameter. When the test is performed, Ipopt prints out a line for every partial derivative, for which the user-provided derivative value deviates too much from the finite difference approximation. The relative tolerance for deciding when a warning should be issued, is determined by the option derivative_test_tol. If you want to see the user-provided and estimated derivative values with the relative deviation for each single partial derivative, you can switch the option derivative_test_print_all to yes.

A typical output is:

Starting derivative checker.

* grad_f[          2] = -6.5159999999999991e+02    ~ -6.5559997134793468e+02  [ 6.101e-03]
* jac_g [    4,    4] =  0.0000000000000000e+00    ~  2.2160643690464592e-02  [ 2.216e-02]
* jac_g [    4,    5] =  1.3798494268463347e+01 v  ~  1.3776333629422766e+01  [ 1.609e-03]
* jac_g [    6,    7] =  1.4776333636790881e+01 v  ~  1.3776333629422766e+01  [ 7.259e-02]

Derivative checker detected 4 error(s).


The star ("*") in the first column indicates that this line corresponds to some partial derivative for which the error tolerance was exceeded. Next, we see which partial derivative is concerned in this output line. For example, in the first line, it is the second component of the objective function gradient (or the third, if the C_STYLE numbering is used, i.e., when counting of indices starts with 0 instead of 1). The first floating point number is the value given by the user code, and the second number (after "~") is the finite differences estimation. Finally, the number in square brackets is the relative difference between these two numbers $$\left(\frac{|\mathrm{approx}-\mathrm{exact}|}{\max(|\mathrm{approx}|,\mathrm{derivative\_test\_tol})}\right)$$.

For constraints, the first index after jac_g is the index of the constraint, and the second one corresponds to the variable index (again, the choice of the numbering style matters).

Since also the sparsity structure of the constraint Jacobian has to be provided by the user, it can be faulty as well. For this, the "v" after a user-provided derivative value indicates that this component of the Jacobian is part of the user provided sparsity structure. If there is no "v", it means that the user did not include this partial derivative in the list of non-zero elements. In the above output, the partial derivative jac_g[4,4] is non-zero (based on the finite difference approximation), but it is not included in the list of non-zero elements (missing "v"), so that the user probably made a mistake in the sparsity structure. The other two Jacobian entries are provided in the non-zero structure but their values seem to be off.

For second derivatives, the output looks like:

*             obj_hess[    1,    1] =  1.8810000000000000e+03 v  ~  1.8820000036612328e+03  [ 5.314e-04]
*     3-th constr_hess[    2,    4] =  1.0000000000000000e+00 v  ~  0.0000000000000000e+00  [ 1.000e+00]


There, the first line shows the deviation of the user-provided partial second derivative in the Hessian for the objective function, and the second line show an error in a partial derivative for the Hessian of the third constraint (again, the numbering style matters).

Since the second derivatives are approximates by finite differences of the first derivatives, you should first correct errors for the first derivatives. Also, since the finite difference approximations are quite expensive, you should try to debug a small instance of your problem if you can.

Another useful option is derivative_test_first_index which allows your to start the derivative test with variables with a larger index. Finally, it is of course always a good idea to run your code through some memory checker, such as valgrind on Linux.

# Quasi-Newton Approximation of Second Derivatives

Ipopt has an option to approximate the Hessian of the Lagrangian by a limited-memory quasi-Newton method (L-BFGS). You can use this feature by setting the option hessian_approximation to the value limited-memory. In this case, it is not necessary to implement the Hessian computation method Ipopt::TNLP::eval_h. If you are using the C or Fortran interface, you still need to implement these functions, but they should return false or IERR=1, respectively, and don't need to do anything else.

In general, when second derivatives can be computed with reasonable computational effort, it is usually a good idea to use them, since then Ipopt normally converges in fewer iterations and is more robust. An exception might be in cases, where your optimization problem has a dense Hessian, i.e., a large percentage of non-zero entries in the Hessian. In such a case, using the quasi-Newton approximation might be better, even if it increases the number of iterations, since with exact second derivatives the computation time per iteration might be significantly higher due to the very large number of non-zero elements in the linear systems that Ipopt solve in order to compute the search direction.

Since the Hessian of the Lagrangian is zero for all variables that appear only linearly in the objective and constraint functions, the Hessian approximation should only take place in the space of all nonlinear variables. By default, it is assumed that all variables are nonlinear, but you can tell Ipopt explicitly which variables are nonlinear, using the Ipopt::TNLP::get_number_of_nonlinear_variables and Ipopt::TNLP::get_list_of_nonlinear_variables methods, see Additional methods in TNLP. (Those methods have been implemented for the AMPL interface, so you would automatically only approximate the Hessian in the space of the nonlinear variables, if you are using the quasi-Newton option for AMPL models.) Currently, those two methods are not available through the C or Fortran interface.

# Warm-Starting Capabilities via AMPL

This section is based on documentation by Victor M. Zavala (Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University).

Warm-starting an interior-point algorithm is an important issue. One of the main difficulties arises from the fact that full-space variable information is required to generate the warm-starting point. While Ipopt is currently equipped to retrieve and receive this type of information through the TNLP interface, there exist some communication barriers in the AMPL interface. When the user solves the problem (NLP), Ipopt will only return the optimal values of the primal variables $$x$$ and of the constraint multipliers corresponding to the active sides of $$g^L \leq g(x) \leq g^U$$. The constraint multiplier values can be accessed through the .dual suffix or through the .sol file. If this information is used to solve the same problem again, you will notice that Ipopt will take some iterations in finding the same solution. The reason for this is that we are missing the input information of the multipliers $$z^L$$ and $$z^U$$ corresponding to the variable bounds $$x^L \leq x \leq x^U$$.

However, Ipopt also passes the values of the bound multipliers $$z^L$$ and $$z^U$$ to AMPL. This will be communicated to the AMPL user through the suffixes ipopt_zL_out and ipopt_zU_out, respectively. The user does not need to declare these suffixes, they will be generated automatically in the AMPL interface. The user can use the suffix values to initialize the bound multipliers for subsequent calls. In order to pass this information to Ipopt, the user will need to declare and assign values to the suffixes ipopt_zL_in and ipopt_zU_in. For instance, for a given variable x[i], this can be done by setting:

let x[i].ipopt_zL_in := x[i].ipopt_zL_out;
let x[i].ipopt_zU_in := x[i].ipopt_zU_out;


If the user does not specify some of these values, Ipopt will set these multipliers to 1.0 (as before). In order to make the warm-start effective, the user has control over the following options from AMPL:

Note, that the use of this feature is far from solving the complicated issue of warm-starting interior-point algorithms. As a general advice, this feature will be useful if the user observes that the solution of subsequent problems (i.e., for different data instances) preserves the same set of active inequalities and bounds (monitor the values of $$z^L$$ and $$z^U$$ for subsequent solutions). In this case, initializing the bound multipliers and setting warm_start_init_point to yes and setting warm_start_bound_push, warm_start_mult_bound_push, and mu_init to a small value (10-6 or so) will reduce significantly the number of iterations. This is particularly useful in setting up on-line applications and high-level optimization strategies in AMPL. If active-set changes are observed between subsequent solutions, then this strategy might not decrease the number of iterations (in some cases, it might even tend to increase the number of iterations).

You might also want to try the adaptive barrier update (instead of the default monotone one where above we chose the initial value 10-6) when doing the warm start. This can be activated by setting the option mu_strategy to adaptive. Also the option mu_oracle gives some alternative choices. In general, the adaptive choice often leads to less iterations, but the computational cost per iteration might be higher.

The file $IPOPTDIR/Ipopt/doc/hs071_warmstart.mod illustrates the use of the warm-start feature on the HS071 problem, see also Using Ipopt through AMPL. # sIpopt: Optimal Sensitivity Based on Ipopt This section is based on documentation by Hans Pirnay (RWTH Aachen) and Rodrigo López-Negrete (Carnegie Mellon University). The sIpopt project provides a toolbox that uses NLP sensitivity theory to generate fast approximations to solutions when parameters in the problem change. It has been developed primarily by Hans Pirnay (RWTH-Aachen), Rodrigo López-Negrete (CMU), and Lorenz Biegler (CMU). Sensitivity of nonlinear programming problems is a key step in any optimization study. Sensitivity provides information on regularity and curvature conditions at KKT points, assesses which variables play dominant roles in the optimization, and provides first order estimates for parametric nonlinear programs. Moreover, for NLP algorithms that use exact second derivatives, sensitivity can be implemented very efficiently within NLP solvers and provide valuable information with very little added computation. This implementation provides Ipopt with the capabilities to calculate sensitivities, and approximate perturbed solutions with them. The basic sensitivity strategy implemented here is based on the application of the Implicit Function Theorem (IFT) to the KKT conditions of the NLP. As shown by Fiacco [4], sensitivities can be obtained from a solution with suitable regularity conditions merely by solving a linearization of the KKT conditions. More details can be found in [8]. If you are using sIpopt for your research, please cite [8]. The sIpopt project is available in the Ipopt repository under $IPOPTDIR/contrib/sIPOPT. It is build together with the Ipopt library and the generated library libsipopt.* and AMPL executable ipopt_sens are installed in $PREFIX/lib and $PREFIX/bin.

The files \$IPOPTDIR/contrib/sIPOPT/examples/parametric_ampl/parametric.{mod,run} are an example that shows how to use sIpopt to solve the NLP

\begin{align*} \min\quad & x_1^2 + x_2^2 + x_3^2, \\ \text{such that}\quad & 6x_1 + 3x_2 + 2x_3 = p_1, \\ & p_2 x_1 + x_2 - x_3 = 1, \\ & x_1, x_2, x_3 \geq 0, \end{align*}

where we perturb the parameters $$p_1$$ and $$p_2$$ from $$p_a = (p_1, p_2) = (5, 1)$$ to $$p_b = (4.5, 1)$$.

Note, that sIpopt has been developed under the constraint that it must work with the regular Ipopt code. Due to this constraint, some compromises had to be made. However, there is an effort to develop sIpopt 2, which is a fork of the Ipopt code that allows for the explicit definition of parametric NLPs. This code can be found at https://github.com/athrpf/sipopt2. If you have questions about sIpopt 2, please contact ​Hans Pirnay.

# Inertia-Free Curvature Test

This section has been contributed by Nai-Yuan Chiang (Argonne National Laboratory) and Victor M. Zavala Tejeda (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

In a filter line-search setting it is necessary to detect the presence of negative curvature and to regularize the Hessian of the Lagrangian when such is present. Regularization ensures that the computed step is a descent direction for the objective function when the constraint violation is sufficiently small, which in turn is necessary to guarantee global convergence.

To detect the presence of negative curvature, the default method implemented in IPOPT requires inertia information of the augmented system. The inertia of the augmented system is the number of positive, negative, and zero eigenvalues. Inertia is currently estimated using symmetric indefinite factorization routines implemented in powerful packages such as MA27, MA57, Pardiso, or SPRAL. When more general linear algebra strategies/packages are used (e.g., iterative, parallel decomposition), however, inertia information is difficult (if not impossible) to obtain.

In [2], we present acceptance tests for the search step that do not require inertia information of the linear system and prove that such tests are sufficient to ensure global convergence. Similar tests were proposed in the exact penalty framework reported in [3]. The inertia-free approach also enables the use of a wider range of linear algebra strategies and packages. We have performed significant benchmarks and found satisfactory performance compared to the inertia-based counterpart. Moreover, we have found that this test can yield significant improvements in computing time because it provides more flexibility to accept steps. This flexibility is particularly beneficial in problems that are inherently ill-conditioned and require significant amounts of regularization.

The inertia-free capability implemented in Ipopt is controlled by the options neg_curv_test_tol and neg_curv_test_reg.