Minion is a solver for constraint satisfaction problem

Constraint satisfaction problem

Constraint satisfaction problems s are mathematical problems defined as a set of objects whose state must satisfy a number of constraints or limitations. CSPs represent the entities in a problem as a homogeneous collection of finite constraints over variables, which is solved by constraint...

s. Unlike constraint programming

Constraint programming

Constraint programming is a programming paradigm wherein relations between variables are stated in the form of constraints. Constraints differ from the common primitives of imperative programming languages in that they do not specify a step or sequence of steps to execute, but rather the properties...

 toolkits, which expect users to write programs in a traditional programming language like C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 or Prolog

Prolog

Prolog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...

, Minion takes a text file which specifies the problem, and solves using only this. This makes using Minion much simpler, at the cost of much less customization.

This limitation allows Minion to be many times faster than competing commercial solvers, for example Minion was found to be faster than the major commercial constraint solver, CPLEX

CPLEX

IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio is an optimization software package. In 2004, the work on CPLEX earned the first ....

(formerly ILOG CPLEX then IBM ILOG).