816 research outputs found
On QBF Proofs and Preprocessing
QBFs (quantified boolean formulas), which are a superset of propositional
formulas, provide a canonical representation for PSPACE problems. To overcome
the inherent complexity of QBF, significant effort has been invested in
developing QBF solvers as well as the underlying proof systems. At the same
time, formula preprocessing is crucial for the application of QBF solvers. This
paper focuses on a missing link in currently-available technology: How to
obtain a certificate (e.g. proof) for a formula that had been preprocessed
before it was given to a solver? The paper targets a suite of commonly-used
preprocessing techniques and shows how to reconstruct certificates for them. On
the negative side, the paper discusses certain limitations of the
currently-used proof systems in the light of preprocessing. The presented
techniques were implemented and evaluated in the state-of-the-art QBF
preprocessor bloqqer.Comment: LPAR 201
Learning for Dynamic subsumption
In this paper a new dynamic subsumption technique for Boolean CNF formulae is
proposed. It exploits simple and sufficient conditions to detect during
conflict analysis, clauses from the original formula that can be reduced by
subsumption. During the learnt clause derivation, and at each step of the
resolution process, we simply check for backward subsumption between the
current resolvent and clauses from the original formula and encoded in the
implication graph. Our approach give rise to a strong and dynamic
simplification technique that exploits learning to eliminate literals from the
original clauses. Experimental results show that the integration of our dynamic
subsumption approach within the state-of-the-art SAT solvers Minisat and Rsat
achieves interesting improvements particularly on crafted instances
k-Step Relative Inductive Generalization
We introduce a new form of SAT-based symbolic model checking. One common idea
in SAT-based symbolic model checking is to generate new clauses from states
that can lead to property violations. Our previous work suggests applying
induction to generalize from such states. While effective on some benchmarks,
the main problem with inductive generalization is that not all such states can
be inductively generalized at a given time in the analysis, resulting in long
searches for generalizable states on some benchmarks. This paper introduces the
idea of inductively generalizing states relative to -step
over-approximations: a given state is inductively generalized relative to the
latest -step over-approximation relative to which the negation of the state
is itself inductive. This idea motivates an algorithm that inductively
generalizes a given state at the highest level so far examined, possibly by
generating more than one mutually -step relative inductive clause. We
present experimental evidence that the algorithm is effective in practice.Comment: 14 page
Effectiveness of pre- and inprocessing for CDCL-based SAT solving
Applying pre- and inprocessing techniques to simplify CNF formulas both before and during search can considerably improve the performance of modern SAT solvers. These algorithms mostly aim at reducing the number of clauses, literals, and variables in the formula. However, to be worthwhile, it is necessary that their additional runtime does not exceed the runtime saved during the subsequent SAT solver execution. In this paper we investigate the efficiency and the practicability of selected simplification algorithms for CDCL-based SAT solving. We first analyze them by means of their expected impact on the CNF formula and SAT solving at all. While testing them on real-world and combinatorial SAT instances, we show which techniques and combinations of them yield a desirable speedup and which ones should be avoided
Partial Quantifier Elimination
We consider the problem of Partial Quantifier Elimination (PQE). Given
formula exists(X)[F(X,Y) & G(X,Y)], where F, G are in conjunctive normal form,
the PQE problem is to find a formula F*(Y) such that F* & exists(X)[G] is
logically equivalent to exists(X)[F & G]. We solve the PQE problem by
generating and adding to F clauses over the free variables that make the
clauses of F with quantified variables redundant. The traditional Quantifier
Elimination problem (QE) is a special case of PQE where G is empty so all
clauses of the input formula with quantified variables need to be made
redundant. The importance of PQE is twofold. First, many problems are more
naturally formulated in terms of PQE rather than QE. Second, in many cases PQE
can be solved more efficiently than QE. We describe a PQE algorithm based on
the machinery of dependency sequents and give experimental results showing the
promise of PQE
Limits of Preprocessing
We present a first theoretical analysis of the power of polynomial-time
preprocessing for important combinatorial problems from various areas in AI. We
consider problems from Constraint Satisfaction, Global Constraints,
Satisfiability, Nonmonotonic and Bayesian Reasoning. We show that, subject to a
complexity theoretic assumption, none of the considered problems can be reduced
by polynomial-time preprocessing to a problem kernel whose size is polynomial
in a structural problem parameter of the input, such as induced width or
backdoor size. Our results provide a firm theoretical boundary for the
performance of polynomial-time preprocessing algorithms for the considered
problems.Comment: This is a slightly longer version of a paper that appeared in the
proceedings of AAAI 201
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