Satisfiability in multi-valued circuits

Satisfiability of Boolean circuits is among the most known and important problems in theoretical computer science. This problem is NP-complete in general but becomes polynomial time when restricted either to monotone gates or linear gates. We go outside Boolean realm and consider circuits built of any fixed set of gates on an arbitrary large finite domain. From the complexity point of view this is strictly connected with the problems of solving equations (or systems of equations) over finite algebras. The research reported in this work was motivated by a desire to know for which finite algebras $\mathbf A$ there is a polynomial time algorithm that decides if an equation over $\mathbf A$ has a solution. We are also looking for polynomial time algorithms that decide if two circuits over a finite algebra compute the same function. Although we have not managed to solve these problems in the most general setting we have obtained such a characterization for a very broad class of algebras from congruence modular varieties. This class includes most known and well-studied algebras such as groups, rings, modules (and their generalizations like quasigroups, loops, near-rings, nonassociative rings, Lie algebras), lattices (and their extensions like Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras or other algebras connected with multi-valued logics including MV-algebras). This paper seems to be the first systematic study of the computational complexity of satisfiability of non-Boolean circuits and solving equations over finite algebras. The characterization results provided by the paper is given in terms of nice structural properties of algebras for which the problems are solvable in polynomial time.Comment: 50 page

Intermediate problems in modular circuits satisfiability

In arXiv:1710.08163 a generalization of Boolean circuits to arbitrary finite algebras had been introduced and applied to sketch P versus NP-complete borderline for circuits satisfiability over algebras from congruence modular varieties. However the problem for nilpotent (which had not been shown to be NP-hard) but not supernilpotent algebras (which had been shown to be polynomial time) remained open. In this paper we provide a broad class of examples, lying in this grey area, and show that, under the Exponential Time Hypothesis and Strong Exponential Size Hypothesis (saying that Boolean circuits need exponentially many modular counting gates to produce boolean conjunctions of any arity), satisfiability over these algebras have intermediate complexity between $\Omega(2^{c\log^{h-1} n})$ and $O(2^{c\log^h n})$, where $h$ measures how much a nilpotent algebra fails to be supernilpotent. We also sketch how these examples could be used as paradigms to fill the nilpotent versus supernilpotent gap in general. Our examples are striking in view of the natural strong connections between circuits satisfiability and Constraint Satisfaction Problem for which the dichotomy had been shown by Bulatov and Zhuk

Complex Algebras of Arithmetic

An 'arithmetic circuit' is a labeled, acyclic directed graph specifying a sequence of arithmetic and logical operations to be performed on sets of natural numbers. Arithmetic circuits can also be viewed as the elements of the smallest subalgebra of the complex algebra of the semiring of natural numbers. In the present paper, we investigate the algebraic structure of complex algebras of natural numbers, and make some observations regarding the complexity of various theories of such algebras

The complexity of problems connected with two-element algebras

This paper presents a complete classification of the complexity of the SAT and equivalence problems for two-element algebras. Cases of terms and polynomials are considered. We show that for any fixed two-element algebra the considered SAT problems are either in P or NP-complete and the equivalence problems are either in P or coNP-complete. We show that the complexity of the considered problems, parametrized by an algebra, are determined by the clone of term operations of the algebra and does not depend on generating functions for the clone

Admissibility in Finitely Generated Quasivarieties

Checking the admissibility of quasiequations in a finitely generated (i.e., generated by a finite set of finite algebras) quasivariety Q amounts to checking validity in a suitable finite free algebra of the quasivariety, and is therefore decidable. However, since free algebras may be large even for small sets of small algebras and very few generators, this naive method for checking admissibility in \Q is not computationally feasible. In this paper, algorithms are introduced that generate a minimal (with respect to a multiset well-ordering on their cardinalities) finite set of algebras such that the validity of a quasiequation in this set corresponds to admissibility of the quasiequation in Q. In particular, structural completeness (validity and admissibility coincide) and almost structural completeness (validity and admissibility coincide for quasiequations with unifiable premises) can be checked. The algorithms are illustrated with a selection of well-known finitely generated quasivarieties, and adapted to handle also admissibility of rules in finite-valued logics

Satisfiability of Circuits and Equations over Finite Malcev Algebras

We show that the satisfiability of circuits over finite Malcev algebra A is NP-complete or A is nilpotent. This strengthens the result from our earlier paper [Idziak and Krzaczkowski, 2018] where nilpotency has been enforced, however with the use of a stronger assumption that no homomorphic image of A has NP-complete circuits satisfiability. Our methods are moreover strong enough to extend our result of [Idziak et al., 2021] from groups to Malcev algebras. Namely we show that tractability of checking if an equation over such an algebra A has a solution enforces its nice structure: A must have a nilpotent congruence ? such that also the quotient algebra A/? is nilpotent. Otherwise, if A has no such congruence ? then the Exponential Time Hypothesis yields a quasipolynomial lower bound. Both our results contain important steps towards a full characterization of finite algebras with tractable circuit satisfiability as well as equation satisfiability

Mace4 Reference Manual and Guide

Mace4 is a program that searches for finite models of first-order formulas. For a given domain size, all instances of the formulas over the domain are constructed. The result is a set of ground clauses with equality. Then, a decision procedure based on ground equational rewriting is applied. If satisfiability is detected, one or more models are printed. Mace4 is a useful complement to first-order theorem provers, with the prover searching for proofs and Mace4 looking for countermodels, and it is useful for work on finite algebras. Mace4 performs better on equational problems than did our previous model-searching program Mace2.Comment: 17 page