26 research outputs found
SAT Competition 2018
Peer reviewe
The Configurable SAT Solver Challenge (CSSC)
It is well known that different solution strategies work well for different
types of instances of hard combinatorial problems. As a consequence, most
solvers for the propositional satisfiability problem (SAT) expose parameters
that allow them to be customized to a particular family of instances. In the
international SAT competition series, these parameters are ignored: solvers are
run using a single default parameter setting (supplied by the authors) for all
benchmark instances in a given track. While this competition format rewards
solvers with robust default settings, it does not reflect the situation faced
by a practitioner who only cares about performance on one particular
application and can invest some time into tuning solver parameters for this
application. The new Configurable SAT Solver Competition (CSSC) compares
solvers in this latter setting, scoring each solver by the performance it
achieved after a fully automated configuration step. This article describes the
CSSC in more detail, and reports the results obtained in its two instantiations
so far, CSSC 2013 and 2014
IPASIR-UP: User Propagators for CDCL
Modern SAT solvers are frequently embedded as sub-reasoning engines into more complex tools for addressing problems beyond the Boolean satisfiability problem. Examples include solvers for Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT), combinatorial optimization, model enumeration and counting. In such use cases, the SAT solver is often able to provide relevant information beyond the satisfiability answer. Further, domain knowledge of the embedding system (e.g., symmetry properties or theory axioms) can be beneficial for the CDCL search, but cannot be efficiently represented in clausal form. In this paper, we propose a general interface to inspect and influence the internal behaviour of CDCL SAT solvers. Our goal is to capture the most essential functionalities that are sufficient to simplify and improve use cases that require a more fine-grained interaction with the SAT solver than provided via the standard IPASIR interface. For our experiments, we extend CaDiCaL with our interface and evaluate it on two representative use cases: enumerating graphs within the SAT modulo Symmetries framework (SMS), and as the main CDCL(T) SAT engine of the SMT solver cvc5
On the van der Waerden numbers w(2;3,t)
We present results and conjectures on the van der Waerden numbers w(2;3,t)
and on the new palindromic van der Waerden numbers pdw(2;3,t). We have computed
the new number w(2;3,19) = 349, and we provide lower bounds for 20 <= t <= 39,
where for t <= 30 we conjecture these lower bounds to be exact. The lower
bounds for 24 <= t <= 30 refute the conjecture that w(2;3,t) <= t^2, and we
present an improved conjecture. We also investigate regularities in the good
partitions (certificates) to better understand the lower bounds.
Motivated by such reglarities, we introduce *palindromic van der Waerden
numbers* pdw(k; t_0,...,t_{k-1}), defined as ordinary van der Waerden numbers
w(k; t_0,...,t_{k-1}), however only allowing palindromic solutions (good
partitions), defined as reading the same from both ends. Different from the
situation for ordinary van der Waerden numbers, these "numbers" need actually
to be pairs of numbers. We compute pdw(2;3,t) for 3 <= t <= 27, and we provide
lower bounds, which we conjecture to be exact, for t <= 35.
All computations are based on SAT solving, and we discuss the various
relations between SAT solving and Ramsey theory. Especially we introduce a
novel (open-source) SAT solver, the tawSolver, which performs best on the SAT
instances studied here, and which is actually the original DLL-solver, but with
an efficient implementation and a modern heuristic typical for look-ahead
solvers (applying the theory developed in the SAT handbook article of the
second author).Comment: Second version 25 pages, updates of numerical data, improved
formulations, and extended discussions on SAT. Third version 42 pages, with
SAT solver data (especially for new SAT solver) and improved representation.
Fourth version 47 pages, with updates and added explanation
On SAT representations of XOR constraints
We study the representation of systems S of linear equations over the
two-element field (aka xor- or parity-constraints) via conjunctive normal forms
F (boolean clause-sets). First we consider the problem of finding an
"arc-consistent" representation ("AC"), meaning that unit-clause propagation
will fix all forced assignments for all possible instantiations of the
xor-variables. Our main negative result is that there is no polysize
AC-representation in general. On the positive side we show that finding such an
AC-representation is fixed-parameter tractable (fpt) in the number of
equations. Then we turn to a stronger criterion of representation, namely
propagation completeness ("PC") --- while AC only covers the variables of S,
now all the variables in F (the variables in S plus auxiliary variables) are
considered for PC. We show that the standard translation actually yields a PC
representation for one equation, but fails so for two equations (in fact
arbitrarily badly). We show that with a more intelligent translation we can
also easily compute a translation to PC for two equations. We conjecture that
computing a representation in PC is fpt in the number of equations.Comment: 39 pages; 2nd v. improved handling of acyclic systems, free-standing
proof of the transformation from AC-representations to monotone circuits,
improved wording and literature review; 3rd v. updated literature,
strengthened treatment of monotonisation, improved discussions; 4th v. update
of literature, discussions and formulations, more details and examples;
conference v. to appear LATA 201
Complications for Computational Experiments from Modern Processors
In this paper, we revisit the approach to empirical experiments for combinatorial solvers. We provide a brief survey on tools that can help to make empirical work easier. We illustrate origins of uncertainty in modern hardware and show how strong the influence of certain aspects of modern hardware and its experimental setup can be in an actual experimental evaluation. More specifically, there can be situations where (i) two different researchers run a reasonable-looking experiment comparing the same solvers and come to different conclusions and (ii) one researcher runs the same experiment twice on the same hardware and reaches different conclusions based upon how the hardware is configured and used. We investigate these situations from a hardware perspective. Furthermore, we provide an overview on standard measures, detailed explanations on effects, potential errors, and biased suggestions for useful tools. Alongside the tools, we discuss their feasibility as experiments often run on clusters to which the experimentalist has only limited access. Our work sheds light on a number of benchmarking-related issues which could be considered to be folklore or even myths
SAT Competition 2020
The SAT Competitions constitute a well-established series of yearly open international algorithm implementation competitions, focusing on the Boolean satisfiability (or propositional satisfiability, SAT) problem. In this article, we provide a detailed account on the 2020 instantiation of the SAT Competition, including the new competition tracks and benchmark selection procedures, overview of solving strategies implemented in top-performing solvers, and a detailed analysis of the empirical data obtained from running the competition
SAT Competition 2020
The SAT Competitions constitute a well-established series of yearly open international algorithm implementation competitions, focusing on the Boolean satisfiability (or propositional satisfiability, SAT) problem. In this article, we provide a detailed account on the 2020 instantiation of the SAT Competition, including the new competition tracks and benchmark selection procedures, overview of solving strategies implemented in top-performing solvers, and a detailed analysis of the empirical data obtained from running the competition. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe