3,147 research outputs found
Hiding Satisfying Assignments: Two are Better than One
The evaluation of incomplete satisfiability solvers depends critically on the
availability of hard satisfiable instances. A plausible source of such
instances consists of random k-SAT formulas whose clauses are chosen uniformly
from among all clauses satisfying some randomly chosen truth assignment A.
Unfortunately, instances generated in this manner tend to be relatively easy
and can be solved efficiently by practical heuristics. Roughly speaking, as the
formula's density increases, for a number of different algorithms, A acts as a
stronger and stronger attractor. Motivated by recent results on the geometry of
the space of satisfying truth assignments of random k-SAT and NAE-k-SAT
formulas, we introduce a simple twist on this basic model, which appears to
dramatically increase its hardness. Namely, in addition to forbidding the
clauses violated by the hidden assignment A, we also forbid the clauses
violated by its complement, so that both A and complement of A are satisfying.
It appears that under this "symmetrization'' the effects of the two attractors
largely cancel out, making it much harder for algorithms to find any truth
assignment. We give theoretical and experimental evidence supporting this
assertion.Comment: Preliminary version appeared in AAAI 200
The random K-satisfiability problem: from an analytic solution to an efficient algorithm
We study the problem of satisfiability of randomly chosen clauses, each with
K Boolean variables. Using the cavity method at zero temperature, we find the
phase diagram for the K=3 case. We show the existence of an intermediate phase
in the satisfiable region, where the proliferation of metastable states is at
the origin of the slowdown of search algorithms. The fundamental order
parameter introduced in the cavity method, which consists of surveys of local
magnetic fields in the various possible states of the system, can be computed
for one given sample. These surveys can be used to invent new types of
algorithms for solving hard combinatorial optimizations problems. One such
algorithm is shown here for the 3-sat problem, with very good performances.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures; corrected typo
Integrating Conflict Driven Clause Learning to Local Search
This article introduces SatHyS (SAT HYbrid Solver), a novel hybrid approach
for propositional satisfiability. It combines local search and conflict driven
clause learning (CDCL) scheme. Each time the local search part reaches a local
minimum, the CDCL is launched. For SAT problems it behaves like a tabu list,
whereas for UNSAT ones, the CDCL part tries to focus on minimum unsatisfiable
sub-formula (MUS). Experimental results show good performances on many classes
of SAT instances from the last SAT competitions
Biased landscapes for random Constraint Satisfaction Problems
The typical complexity of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) can be
investigated by means of random ensembles of instances. The latter exhibit many
threshold phenomena besides their satisfiability phase transition, in
particular a clustering or dynamic phase transition (related to the tree
reconstruction problem) at which their typical solutions shatter into
disconnected components. In this paper we study the evolution of this
phenomenon under a bias that breaks the uniformity among solutions of one CSP
instance, concentrating on the bicoloring of k-uniform random hypergraphs. We
show that for small k the clustering transition can be delayed in this way to
higher density of constraints, and that this strategy has a positive impact on
the performances of Simulated Annealing algorithms. We characterize the modest
gain that can be expected in the large k limit from the simple implementation
of the biasing idea studied here. This paper contains also a contribution of a
more methodological nature, made of a review and extension of the methods to
determine numerically the discontinuous dynamic transition threshold.Comment: 32 pages, 16 figure
Conflict Analysis in Search Algorithms for Satisfiability
This paper introduces GRASP (Generic search Algorithm jr the Satisfiabili{y Problem), a new search algorithm jr Propositional Satisfiabili{y (SAT). GRASP incorporates several search-pruning techniques, some of which are specific to SAT, whereas others find equivalent in other fields of Artificial Intelligence. GRASP is premised on the inevitabili{y of conflicts during search and its most distinguishingjature is the augmentation of basic backtracking search with a powerful conflict analysis procedure. Analyzing conflicts to determine their causes enables GRASP to backtrack non-chronologically to earlier levels in the search tree, potentially pruning large portions of the search space. In addition, by 'gecording" the causes of conflicts, GRASP can recognize and preempt the occurrence of similar conflicts later on in the search. Finally, straigh&rward bookkeeping of the causali {y chains leading up to conflicts allows GRASP to identij) assignments that are necessary jr a solution to be jund. Experimental results obtained jom a large number of benchmarks indicate that application of the proposed conflict analysis techniques to SAT algorithms can be extremely efctive jr a large number of representative classes of SAT instances
Low-rank semidefinite programming for the MAX2SAT problem
This paper proposes a new algorithm for solving MAX2SAT problems based on
combining search methods with semidefinite programming approaches. Semidefinite
programming techniques are well-known as a theoretical tool for approximating
maximum satisfiability problems, but their application has traditionally been
very limited by their speed and randomized nature. Our approach overcomes this
difficult by using a recent approach to low-rank semidefinite programming,
specialized to work in an incremental fashion suitable for use in an exact
search algorithm. The method can be used both within complete or incomplete
solver, and we demonstrate on a variety of problems from recent competitions.
Our experiments show that the approach is faster (sometimes by orders of
magnitude) than existing state-of-the-art complete and incomplete solvers,
representing a substantial advance in search methods specialized for MAX2SAT
problems.Comment: Accepted at AAAI'19. The code can be found at
https://github.com/locuslab/mixsa
Behavior of heuristics and state space structure near SAT/UNSAT transition
We study the behavior of ASAT, a heuristic for solving satisfiability
problems by stochastic local search near the SAT/UNSAT transition. The
heuristic is focused, i.e. only variables in unsatisfied clauses are updated in
each step, and is significantly simpler, while similar to, walksat or Focused
Metropolis Search. We show that ASAT solves instances as large as one million
variables in linear time, on average, up to 4.21 clauses per variable for
random 3SAT. For K higher than 3, ASAT appears to solve instances at the ``FRSB
threshold'' in linear time, up to K=7.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, longer version available as MSc thesis of first
author at http://biophys.physics.kth.se/docs/ardelius_thesis.pd
Satisfiability threshold for random regular NAE-SAT
We consider the random regular -NAE-SAT problem with variables each
appearing in exactly clauses. For all exceeding an absolute constant
, we establish explicitly the satisfiability threshold . We
prove that for the problem is satisfiable with high probability while
for the problem is unsatisfiable with high probability. If the
threshold lands exactly on an integer, we show that the problem is
satisfiable with probability bounded away from both zero and one. This is the
first result to locate the exact satisfiability threshold in a random
constraint satisfaction problem exhibiting the condensation phenomenon
identified by Krzakala et al. (2007). Our proof verifies the one-step replica
symmetry breaking formalism for this model. We expect our methods to be
applicable to a broad range of random constraint satisfaction problems and
combinatorial problems on random graphs
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