604 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
A Logical Approach to Efficient Max-SAT solving
Weighted Max-SAT is the optimization version of SAT and many important
problems can be naturally encoded as such. Solving weighted Max-SAT is an
important problem from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. In
recent years, there has been considerable interest in finding efficient solving
techniques. Most of this work focus on the computation of good quality lower
bounds to be used within a branch and bound DPLL-like algorithm. Most often,
these lower bounds are described in a procedural way. Because of that, it is
difficult to realize the {\em logic} that is behind.
In this paper we introduce an original framework for Max-SAT that stresses
the parallelism with classical SAT. Then, we extend the two basic SAT solving
techniques: {\em search} and {\em inference}. We show that many algorithmic
{\em tricks} used in state-of-the-art Max-SAT solvers are easily expressable in
{\em logic} terms with our framework in a unified manner.
Besides, we introduce an original search algorithm that performs a restricted
amount of {\em weighted resolution} at each visited node. We empirically
compare our algorithm with a variety of solving alternatives on several
benchmarks. Our experiments, which constitute to the best of our knowledge the
most comprehensive Max-sat evaluation ever reported, show that our algorithm is
generally orders of magnitude faster than any competitor
Simplest random K-satisfiability problem
We study a simple and exactly solvable model for the generation of random
satisfiability problems. These consist of random boolean constraints
which are to be satisfied simultaneously by logical variables. In
statistical-mechanics language, the considered model can be seen as a diluted
p-spin model at zero temperature. While such problems become extraordinarily
hard to solve by local search methods in a large region of the parameter space,
still at least one solution may be superimposed by construction. The
statistical properties of the model can be studied exactly by the replica
method and each single instance can be analyzed in polynomial time by a simple
global solution method. The geometrical/topological structures responsible for
dynamic and static phase transitions as well as for the onset of computational
complexity in local search method are thoroughly analyzed. Numerical analysis
on very large samples allows for a precise characterization of the critical
scaling behaviour.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E (Feb 2001). v2: minor
errors and references correcte
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