Karmarkar–Karp bin packing algorithms: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:35, 28 May 2025

Revision as of 19:22, 4 June 2025

Line 2:

{{Multiple issues|{{refimprove|date=March 2022}}{{more footnotes|date=March 2022}}}}

The '''Karmarkar–Karp''' ('''KK''') '''bin packing algorithms''' are several related [[approximation algorithm]] for the [[bin packing problem]].<ref name=":12">{{cite journalbook|last1=Karmarkar|first1=Narendra|last2=Karp|first2=Richard M.|datetitle=November23rd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (SFCS 1982) |titlechapter=An efficient approximation scheme for the one-dimensional bin-packing problem |date=November 1982 |chapter-url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4568405/references#references|journal=23rd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (SFCS 1982)|pages=312–320|doi=10.1109/SFCS.1982.61|s2cid=18583908|chapter-url-access=subscription}}</ref> The bin packing problem is a problem of packing items of different sizes into bins of identical capacity, such that the total number of bins is as small as possible. Finding the optimal solution is [[NP-hardness|computationally hard]]. [[Narendra Karmarkar|Karmarkar]] and [[Richard M. Karp|Karp]] devised an algorithm that runs in [[Polynomial-time|polynomial time]] and finds a solution with at most <math>\mathrm{OPT} + \mathcal{O}(\log^2(OPT))</math> bins, where OPT is the number of bins in the optimal solution. They also devised several other algorithms with slightly different approximation guarantees and run-time bounds.

The KK algorithms were considered a breakthrough in the study of bin packing: the previously-known algorithms found multiplicative approximation, where the number of bins was at most <math>r\cdot \mathrm{OPT}+s</math> for some constants <math>r>1, s>0</math>, or at most <math>(1+\varepsilon)\mathrm{OPT} + 1</math>.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal|last1=Fernandez de la Vega|first1=W.|last2=Lueker|first2=G. S.|date=1981|title=Bin packing can be solved within 1 + ε in linear time|journal=Combinatorica|language=en|volume=1|issue=4|pages=349–355|doi=10.1007/BF02579456|issn=1439-6912|s2cid=10519631}}</ref> The KK algorithms were the first ones to attain an additive approximation.