5,526 research outputs found
Breaking Instance-Independent Symmetries In Exact Graph Coloring
Code optimization and high level synthesis can be posed as constraint
satisfaction and optimization problems, such as graph coloring used in register
allocation. Graph coloring is also used to model more traditional CSPs relevant
to AI, such as planning, time-tabling and scheduling. Provably optimal
solutions may be desirable for commercial and defense applications.
Additionally, for applications such as register allocation and code
optimization, naturally-occurring instances of graph coloring are often small
and can be solved optimally. A recent wave of improvements in algorithms for
Boolean satisfiability (SAT) and 0-1 Integer Linear Programming (ILP) suggests
generic problem-reduction methods, rather than problem-specific heuristics,
because (1) heuristics may be upset by new constraints, (2) heuristics tend to
ignore structure, and (3) many relevant problems are provably inapproximable.
Problem reductions often lead to highly symmetric SAT instances, and
symmetries are known to slow down SAT solvers. In this work, we compare several
avenues for symmetry breaking, in particular when certain kinds of symmetry are
present in all generated instances. Our focus on reducing CSPs to SAT allows us
to leverage recent dramatic improvement in SAT solvers and automatically
benefit from future progress. We can use a variety of black-box SAT solvers
without modifying their source code because our symmetry-breaking techniques
are static, i.e., we detect symmetries and add symmetry breaking predicates
(SBPs) during pre-processing.
An important result of our work is that among the types of
instance-independent SBPs we studied and their combinations, the simplest and
least complete constructions are the most effective. Our experiments also
clearly indicate that instance-independent symmetries should mostly be
processed together with instance-specific symmetries rather than at the
specification level, contrary to what has been suggested in the literature
Sum Coloring : New upper bounds for the chromatic strength
The Minimum Sum Coloring Problem (MSCP) is derived from the Graph Coloring
Problem (GCP) by associating a weight to each color. The aim of MSCP is to find
a coloring solution of a graph such that the sum of color weights is minimum.
MSCP has important applications in fields such as scheduling and VLSI design.
We propose in this paper new upper bounds of the chromatic strength, i.e. the
minimum number of colors in an optimal solution of MSCP, based on an
abstraction of all possible colorings of a graph called motif. Experimental
results on standard benchmarks show that our new bounds are significantly
tighter than the previous bounds in general, allowing to reduce substantially
the search space when solving MSCP .Comment: pre-prin
Extremal Optimization at the Phase Transition of the 3-Coloring Problem
We investigate the phase transition of the 3-coloring problem on random
graphs, using the extremal optimization heuristic. 3-coloring is among the
hardest combinatorial optimization problems and is closely related to a 3-state
anti-ferromagnetic Potts model. Like many other such optimization problems, it
has been shown to exhibit a phase transition in its ground state behavior under
variation of a system parameter: the graph's mean vertex degree. This phase
transition is often associated with the instances of highest complexity. We use
extremal optimization to measure the ground state cost and the ``backbone'', an
order parameter related to ground state overlap, averaged over a large number
of instances near the transition for random graphs of size up to 512. For
graphs up to this size, benchmarks show that extremal optimization reaches
ground states and explores a sufficient number of them to give the correct
backbone value after about update steps. Finite size scaling gives
a critical mean degree value . Furthermore, the
exploration of the degenerate ground states indicates that the backbone order
parameter, measuring the constrainedness of the problem, exhibits a first-order
phase transition.Comment: RevTex4, 8 pages, 4 postscript figures, related information available
at http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/boettcher
How to Color a French Flag--Biologically Inspired Algorithms for Scale-Invariant Patterning
In the French flag problem, initially uncolored cells on a grid must
differentiate to become blue, white or red. The goal is for the cells to color
the grid as a French flag, i.e., a three-colored triband, in a distributed
manner. To solve a generalized version of the problem in a distributed
computational setting, we consider two models: a biologically-inspired version
that relies on morphogens (diffusing proteins acting as chemical signals) and a
more abstract version based on reliable message passing between cellular
agents.
Much of developmental biology research has focused on concentration-based
approaches using morphogens, since morphogen gradients are thought to be an
underlying mechanism in tissue patterning. We show that both our model types
easily achieve a French ribbon - a French flag in the 1D case. However,
extending the ribbon to the 2D flag in the concentration model is somewhat
difficult unless each agent has additional positional information. Assuming
that cells are are identical, it is impossible to achieve a French flag or even
a close approximation. In contrast, using a message-based approach in the 2D
case only requires assuming that agents can be represented as constant size
state machines.
We hope that our insights may lay some groundwork for what kind of message
passing abstractions or guarantees, if any, may be useful in analogy to cells
communicating at long and short distances to solve patterning problems. In
addition, we hope that our models and findings may be of interest in the design
of nano-robots
Choosing Colors for Geometric Graphs via Color Space Embeddings
Graph drawing research traditionally focuses on producing geometric
embeddings of graphs satisfying various aesthetic constraints. After the
geometric embedding is specified, there is an additional step that is often
overlooked or ignored: assigning display colors to the graph's vertices. We
study the additional aesthetic criterion of assigning distinct colors to
vertices of a geometric graph so that the colors assigned to adjacent vertices
are as different from one another as possible. We formulate this as a problem
involving perceptual metrics in color space and we develop algorithms for
solving this problem by embedding the graph in color space. We also present an
application of this work to a distributed load-balancing visualization problem.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. To appear at 14th Int. Symp. Graph Drawing, 200
From the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm to a Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz
The next few years will be exciting as prototype universal quantum processors
emerge, enabling implementation of a wider variety of algorithms. Of particular
interest are quantum heuristics, which require experimentation on quantum
hardware for their evaluation, and which have the potential to significantly
expand the breadth of quantum computing applications. A leading candidate is
Farhi et al.'s Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm, which alternates
between applying a cost-function-based Hamiltonian and a mixing Hamiltonian.
Here, we extend this framework to allow alternation between more general
families of operators. The essence of this extension, the Quantum Alternating
Operator Ansatz, is the consideration of general parametrized families of
unitaries rather than only those corresponding to the time-evolution under a
fixed local Hamiltonian for a time specified by the parameter. This ansatz
supports the representation of a larger, and potentially more useful, set of
states than the original formulation, with potential long-term impact on a
broad array of application areas. For cases that call for mixing only within a
desired subspace, refocusing on unitaries rather than Hamiltonians enables more
efficiently implementable mixers than was possible in the original framework.
Such mixers are particularly useful for optimization problems with hard
constraints that must always be satisfied, defining a feasible subspace, and
soft constraints whose violation we wish to minimize. More efficient
implementation enables earlier experimental exploration of an alternating
operator approach to a wide variety of approximate optimization, exact
optimization, and sampling problems. Here, we introduce the Quantum Alternating
Operator Ansatz, lay out design criteria for mixing operators, detail mappings
for eight problems, and provide brief descriptions of mappings for diverse
problems.Comment: 51 pages, 2 figures. Revised to match journal pape
A Multiscale Pyramid Transform for Graph Signals
Multiscale transforms designed to process analog and discrete-time signals
and images cannot be directly applied to analyze high-dimensional data residing
on the vertices of a weighted graph, as they do not capture the intrinsic
geometric structure of the underlying graph data domain. In this paper, we
adapt the Laplacian pyramid transform for signals on Euclidean domains so that
it can be used to analyze high-dimensional data residing on the vertices of a
weighted graph. Our approach is to study existing methods and develop new
methods for the four fundamental operations of graph downsampling, graph
reduction, and filtering and interpolation of signals on graphs. Equipped with
appropriate notions of these operations, we leverage the basic multiscale
constructs and intuitions from classical signal processing to generate a
transform that yields both a multiresolution of graphs and an associated
multiresolution of a graph signal on the underlying sequence of graphs.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure
A New Look at the Easy-Hard-Easy Pattern of Combinatorial Search Difficulty
The easy-hard-easy pattern in the difficulty of combinatorial search problems
as constraints are added has been explained as due to a competition between the
decrease in number of solutions and increased pruning. We test the generality
of this explanation by examining one of its predictions: if the number of
solutions is held fixed by the choice of problems, then increased pruning
should lead to a monotonic decrease in search cost. Instead, we find the
easy-hard-easy pattern in median search cost even when the number of solutions
is held constant, for some search methods. This generalizes previous
observations of this pattern and shows that the existing theory does not
explain the full range of the peak in search cost. In these cases the pattern
appears to be due to changes in the size of the minimal unsolvable subproblems,
rather than changing numbers of solutions.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file
Partitioning networks into cliques: a randomized heuristic approach
In the context of community detection in social networks, the term community can be grounded in the strict way that simply everybody should know each other within the community. We consider the corresponding community detection problem. We search for a partitioning of a network into the minimum number of non-overlapping cliques, such that the cliques cover all vertices. This problem is called the clique covering problem (CCP) and is one of the classical NP-hard problems. For CCP, we propose a randomized heuristic approach. To construct a high quality solution to CCP, we present an iterated greedy (IG) algorithm. IG can also be combined with a heuristic used to determine how far the algorithm is from the optimum in the worst case. Randomized local search (RLS) for maximum independent set was proposed to find such a bound. The experimental results of IG and the bounds obtained by RLS indicate that IG is a very suitable technique for solving CCP in real-world graphs. In addition, we summarize our basic rigorous results, which were developed for analysis of IG and understanding of its behavior on several relevant graph classes
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