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Parallel Clause Sharing Strategy Based on Graph Structure of SAT Problem

Authors Yoichiro Iida , Tomohiro Sonobe , Mary Inaba

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Author Details

Yoichiro Iida
  • Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Tomohiro Sonobe
  • National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan
Mary Inaba
  • Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable comments and constructive feedback, which have greatly improved the quality of this paper. Additionally, we are grateful to the members of the Imai Laboratory for their insightful discussions and support throughout this research.

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Yoichiro Iida, Tomohiro Sonobe, and Mary Inaba. Parallel Clause Sharing Strategy Based on Graph Structure of SAT Problem. In 27th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing (SAT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 305, pp. 17:1-17:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SAT.2024.17

Abstract

Parallelization of SAT solvers is an important technique for improving solver performance. The selection of the learnt clauses to share among parallel workers is crucial for its efficiency. Literal block distance (LBD) is often used to evaluate the quality of clauses to select. We propose a new method, Parallel Clause sharing based on graph Structure (PaCS), to select good clauses for sharing. First, we conducted three preliminary experiments to assess the performance of LBD in parallel clause sharing: a performance comparison between the LBD and clause size, an analysis of the utilization of shared clauses, and a comparison of the LBD values of shared clauses at originating and receiving workers. These experiments indicate that the LBD may not be optimal for learnt clause sharing. We attribute the results to the LBD’s inherent dependency on decision trees. Each parallel worker has a unique decision tree; thus, a sharing clause that is good for its originating worker may not be good for others. Therefore, we propose PaCS, a search-independent method that uses the graph structure derived from the input CNF of SAT problems. PaCS evaluates clauses using their edges' weight in the variable incidence graph. Using the input CNF’s graph is effective for parallel clause sharing because it is the common input for all parallel workers. Furthermore, using edge weight can select clauses whose variables' Boolean values are more likely to be determined. Performance evaluation experiments demonstrate that our strategy outperforms LBD by 4% in the number of solved instances and by 12% in PAR-2. This study opens avenues for further improvements in parallel-solving strategies using the structure of SAT problems and reinterpretations of the quality of learnt clauses.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Computing methodologies → Heuristic function construction
  • Mathematics of computing → Solvers
Keywords
  • SAT Solver
  • Structure of SAT
  • Parallel application
  • Clause Learning

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