MetaBox-v2: A Unified Benchmark Platform for Meta-Black-Box Optimization

Meta-Black-Box Optimization (MetaBBO) streamlines the automation of optimization algorithm design through meta-learning. It typically employs a bi-level structure: the meta-level policy undergoes meta-training to reduce the manual effort required in developing algorithms for low-level optimization tasks. The original MetaBox (2023) provided the first open-source framework for reinforcement learning-based single-objective MetaBBO. However, its relatively narrow scope no longer keep pace with the swift advancement in this field. In this paper, we introduce MetaBox-v2 (this https URL) as a milestone upgrade with four novel features: 1) a unified architecture supporting RL, evolutionary, and gradient-based approaches, by which we reproduce 23 up-to-date baselines; 2) efficient parallelization schemes, which reduce the training/testing time by 10-40x; 3) a comprehensive benchmark suite of 18 synthetic/realistic tasks (1900+ instances) spanning single-objective, multi-objective, multi-model, and multi-task optimization scenarios; 4) plentiful and extensible interfaces for custom analysis/visualization and integrating to external optimization tools/benchmarks. To show the utility of MetaBox-v2, we carry out a systematic case study that evaluates the built-in baselines in terms of the optimization performance, generalization ability and learning efficiency. Valuable insights are concluded from thorough and detailed analysis for practitioners and those new to the field.

@article{ma2025_2505.17745,
  title={ MetaBox-v2: A Unified Benchmark Platform for Meta-Black-Box Optimization },
  author={ Zeyuan Ma and Yue-Jiao Gong and Hongshu Guo and Wenjie Qiu and Sijie Ma and Hongqiao Lian and Jiajun Zhan and Kaixu Chen and Chen Wang and Zhiyang Huang and Zechuan Huang and Guojun Peng and Ran Cheng and Yining Ma },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.17745},
  year={ 2025 }
}