Boolean equi-propagation for concise and efficient SAT encodings of combinatorial problems

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Publication:4913754

DOI10.1613/JAIR.3809zbMATH Open1267.68216arXiv1402.0568OpenAlexW3102811762WikidataQ129493544 ScholiaQ129493544MaRDI QIDQ4913754FDOQ4913754


Authors: Amit Metodi, Michael Codish, Peter J. Stuckey Edit this on Wikidata


Publication date: 9 April 2013

Published in: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We present an approach to propagation-based SAT encoding of combinatorial problems, Boolean equi-propagation, where constraints are modeled as Boolean functions which propagate information about equalities between Boolean literals. This information is then applied to simplify the CNF encoding of the constraints. A key factor is that considering only a small fragment of a constraint model at one time enables us to apply stronger, and even complete, reasoning to detect equivalent literals in that fragment. Once detected, equivalences apply to simplify the entire constraint model and facilitate further reasoning on other fragments. Equi-propagation in combination with partial evaluation and constraint simplification provide the foundation for a powerful approach to SAT-based finite domain constraint solving. We introduce a tool called BEE (Ben-Gurion Equi-propagation Encoder) based on these ideas and demonstrate for a variety of benchmarks that our approach leads to a considerable reduction in the size of CNF encodings and subsequent speed-ups in SAT solving times.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0568




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