Algorithm configuration methods optimize the performance of a parameterized heuristic algorithm on a given distribution of problem instances. Recent work introduced an algorithm configuration procedure ("Structured Procrastination") that provably achieves near optimal performance with high probability and with

Algorithm configuration methods optimize the performance of a parameterized heuristic algorithm on a given distribution of problem instances. Recent work introduced an algorithm configuration procedure ( Structured Procrastination'') that provably achieves near optimal performance with high probability and with nearly minimal runtime in the worst case. It also offers an anytime property: it keeps tightening its optimality guarantees the longer it is run. Unfortunately, Structured Procrastination is not adaptive to characteristics of the parameterized algorithm: it treats every input like the worst case. Follow-up work ( LeapsAndBounds'') achieves adaptivity but trades away the anytime property.

Algorithm configuration methods optimize the performance of a parameterized heuristic algorithm on a given distribution of problem instances. Recent work introduced an algorithm configuration procedure ('Structured Procrastination') that provably achieves near optimal performance with high probability and with nearly minimal runtime in the worst case. It also offers an $\textit{anytime}$ property: it keeps tightening its optimality guarantees the longer it is run. Unfortunately, Structured Procrastination is not $\textit{adaptive}$ to characteristics of the parameterized algorithm: it treats every input like the worst case. Follow-up work ('Leaps and Bounds') achieves adaptivity but trades away the anytime property. This paper introduces a new algorithm configuration method, 'Structured Procrastination with Confidence', that preserves the near-optimality and anytime properties of Structured Procrastination while adding adaptivity. In particular, the new algorithm will perform dramatically faster in settings where many algorithm configurations perform poorly; we show empirically that such settings arise frequently in practice.

We consider the problem of configuring general-purpose solvers to run efficiently on problem instances drawn from an unknown distribution. The goal of the configurator is to find a configuration that runs fast on average on most instances, and do so with the least amount of total work. It can run a chosen solver on a random instance until the solver finishes or a timeout is reached. We propose LeapsAndBounds, an algorithm that tests configurations on randomly selected problem instances for longer and longer time. We prove that the capped expected runtime of the configuration returned by LeapsAndBounds is close to the optimal expected runtime, while our algorithm's running time is near-optimal. Our results show that LeapsAndBounds is more efficient than the recent algorithm of Kleinberg et al. (2017), which, to our knowledge, is the only other algorithm configuration method with non-trivial theoretical guarantees. Experimental results on configuring a public SAT solver on a new benchmark dataset also stand witness to the superiority of our method.