Effective Lower Bounding Techniques for Pseudo-Boolean Optimization

Linear Pseudo-Boolean Optimization (PBO) is a widely used modeling framework in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). Due to significant advances in Boolean Satisfiability (SAT), new algorithms for PBO have emerged, which are effective on highly constrained instances. However, these algorithms fail to handle effectively the information provided by the cost function of PBO. This paper addresses the integration of lower bound estimation methods with SAT-related techniques in PBO solvers. Moreover, the paper shows that the utilization of lower bound estimates can dramatically improve the overall performance of PBO solvers for most existing benchmarks from EDA. 1

On Optimization Modulo Theories, MaxSMT and Sorting Networks

Optimization Modulo Theories (OMT) is an extension of SMT which allows for finding models that optimize given objectives. (Partial weighted) MaxSMT --or equivalently OMT with Pseudo-Boolean objective functions, OMT+PB-- is a very-relevant strict subcase of OMT. We classify existing approaches for MaxSMT or OMT+PB in two groups: MaxSAT-based approaches exploit the efficiency of state-of-the-art MAXSAT solvers, but they are specific-purpose and not always applicable; OMT-based approaches are general-purpose, but they suffer from intrinsic inefficiencies on MaxSMT/OMT+PB problems. We identify a major source of such inefficiencies, and we address it by enhancing OMT by means of bidirectional sorting networks. We implemented this idea on top of the OptiMathSAT OMT solver. We run an extensive empirical evaluation on a variety of problems, comparing MaxSAT-based and OMT-based techniques, with and without sorting networks, implemented on top of OptiMathSAT and {\nu}Z. The results support the effectiveness of this idea, and provide interesting insights about the different approaches.Comment: 17 pages, submitted at Tacas 1