For nonnegative integers q, n, d, let Aq(n, d) denote the maximum cardinality of a code
of length n over an alphabet [q] with q letters and with minimum distance at least d. We consider
the following upper bound on Aq(n, d). For any k, let Ck be the collection of codes of cardinality
at most k. Then Aq(n, d) is at most the maximum value of Pv∈[q]n x({v}), where x is a function
C4 → R+ such that x(∅) = 1 and x(C) = 0 if C has minimum distance less than d, and such that
the C2 ×C2 matrix (x(C ∪C′))C,C′∈C2 is positive semidefinite. By the symmetry of the problem, we
can apply representation theory to reduce the problem to a semidefinite programming problem with
order bounded by a polynomial in n. It yields the new upper bounds A4(6, 3) ≤ 176, A4(7, 4) ≤ 155,
A5(7, 4) ≤ 489, and A5(7, 5) ≤ 87