Johannes Klaus Fichte

Clause-learning algorithms with many restarts and bounded-width resolution

We offer a new understanding of some aspects of practical SAT-solvers that are based on DPLL with unit-clause propagation, clause-learning, and restarts. We do so by analyzing a concrete algorithm which we claim is faithful to what practical solvers do. In particular, before making any new decision or restart, the solver repeatedly applies the unit-resolution rule until saturation, and leaves no component to the mercy of non-determinism except for some internal randomness. We prove the perhaps surprising fact that, although the solver is not explicitly designed for it, with high probability it ends up behaving as width-k resolution after no more than O(n2k+2) conflicts and restarts, where n is the number of variables. In other words, width-k resolution can be thought of as O(n2k+2) restarts of the unit-resolution rule with learning.

Backdoors to Normality for Disjunctive Logic Programs

The main reasoning problems for disjunctive logic programs are complete for the second level of the polynomial hierarchy and hence considered harder than the same problems for normal (i.e., disjunction-free) programs, which are on the first level. We propose a new exact method for solving the disjunctive problems which exploits the small distance of a disjunctive programs from being normal. The distance is measured in terms of the size of a smallest “backdoor to normality,” which is the smallest number of atoms whose deletion makes the program normal. Our method consists of three phases. In the first phase, a smallest backdoor is computed. We show that this can be done using an efficient algorithm for computing a smallest vertex cover of a graph. In the second phase, the backdoor is used to transform the logic program into a quantified Boolean formula (QBF) where the number of universally quantified variables equals the size of the backdoor and where the total size of the quantified Boolean formula is quasilinear in the size of the given logic program. The quasilinearity is achieved by means of a characterization of the least model of a Horn program in terms of level numberings. In a third phase, the universal variables are eliminated using universal expansion yielding a propositional formula. The blowup in the last phase is confined to a factor that is exponential in the size of the backdoor but linear in the size of the quantified Boolean formula. By checking the satisfiability of the resulting formula with a Sat solver (or by checking the satisfiability of the quantified Boolean formula by a Qbf-Sat solver), we can decide the Asp reasoning problems on the input program. In consequence, we have a transformation from Asp problems to propositional satisfiability where the combinatorial explosion, which is expected when transforming a problem from the second level of the polynomial hierarchy to the first level, is confined to a function of the distance to normality of the input program. In terms of parameterized complexity, the transformation is fixed-parameter tractable. We complement this result by showing that (under plausible complexity-theoretic assumptions) such a fixed-parameter tractable transformation is not possible if we consider the distance to tightness instead of distance to normality.

Clause-Learning Algorithms with Many Restarts and Bounded-Width Resolution

We offer a new understanding of some aspects of practical SAT-solvers that are based on DPLL with unit-clause propagation, clause-learning, and restarts. On the theoretical side, we do so by analyzing a concrete algorithm which we claim is faithful to what practical solvers do. In particular, before making any new decision or restart, the solver repeatedly applies the unit-resolution rule until saturation, and leaves no component to the mercy of non-determinism except for some internal randomness. We prove the perhaps surprising fact that, although the solver is not explicitely designed for it, it ends up behaving as width-k resolution after no more than n 2k + 1 conflicts and restarts, where n is the number of variables. In other words, width-k resolution can be thought as n 2k + 1 restarts of the unit-resolution rule with learning. On the experimental side, we give evidence for the claim that this theoretical result describes real world solvers. We do so by running some of the most prominent solvers on some CNF formulas that we designed to have resolution refutations of width k . It turns out that the upper bound of the theoretical result holds for these solvers and that the true performance appears to be not very far from it.

Answer Set Solving with Bounded Treewidth Revisited

Parameterized algorithms are a way to solve hard problems more efficiently, given that a specific parameter of the input is small. In this paper, we apply this idea to the field of answer set programming (ASP). To this end, we propose two kinds of graph representations of programs to exploit their treewidth as a parameter. Treewidth roughly measures to which extent the internal structure of a program resembles a tree. Our main contribution is the design of parameterized dynamic programming algorithms, which run in linear time if the treewidth and weights of the given program are bounded. Compared to previous work, our algorithms handle the full syntax of ASP. Finally, we report on an empirical evaluation that shows good runtime behaviour for benchmark instances of low treewidth, especially for counting answer sets.

DynASP2.5: Dynamic Programming on Tree Decompositions in Action

A vibrant theoretical research area are efficient exact parameterized algorithms. Very recent solving competitions such as the PACE challenge show that there is also increasing practical interest in the parameterized algorithms community. An important research question is whether dedicated parameterized exact algorithms exhibit certain practical relevance and one can even beat well-established problem solvers. We consider the logic-based declarative modeling language and problem solving framework Answer Set Programming (ASP). State-of-the-art ASP solvers rely considerably on Sat-based algorithms. An ASP solver (DynASP2), which is based on a classical dynamic programming on tree decompositions, has been published very recently. Unfortunately, DynASP2 can outperform modern ASP solvers on programs of small treewidth only if the question of interest is to count the number of solutions. In this paper, we describe underlying concepts of our new implementation (DynASP2.5) that shows competitive behavior to state-of-the-art ASP solvers even for finding just one solution when solving problems as the Steiner tree problem that have been modeled in ASP on graphs with low treewidth. Our implementation is based on a novel approach that we call multi-pass dynamic programming (M-DPSINC).

Exploiting Treewidth for Projected Model Counting and Its Limits.

In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm to solve projected model counting (PMC). PMC asks to count solutions of a Boolean formula with respect to a given set of projected variables, where multiple solutions that are identical when restricted to the projected variables count as only one solution. Our algorithm exploits small treewidth of the primal graph of the input instance. It runs in time \({\mathcal O}(2^{2^{k+4}} n^2)\) where k is the treewidth and n is the input size of the instance. In other words, we obtain that the problem PMC is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by treewidth. Further, we take the exponential time hypothesis (ETH) into consideration and establish lower bounds of bounded treewidth algorithms for PMC, yielding asymptotically tight runtime bounds of our algorithm.

SAT-Based Local Improvement for Finding Tree Decompositions of Small Width

Many hard problems can be solved efficiently for problem instances that can be decomposed by tree decompositions of small width. In particular for problems beyond NP, such as #P-complete counting problems, tree decomposition-based methods are particularly attractive. However, finding an optimal tree decomposition is itself an NP-hard problem. Existing methods for finding tree decompositions of small width either (a) yield optimal tree decompositions but are applicable only to small instances or (b) are based on greedy heuristics which often yield tree decompositions that are far from optimal. In this paper, we propose a new method that combines (a) and (b), where a heuristically obtained tree decomposition is improved locally by means of a SAT encoding. We provide an experimental evaluation of our new method.

Strong Backdoors for Default Logic

In this paper, we introduce a notion of backdoors to Reiter’s propositional default logic and study structural properties of it. Also we consider the problems of backdoor detection (parameterised by the solution size) as well as backdoor evaluation (parameterised by the size of the given backdoor), for various kinds of target classes (cnf, horn, krom, monotone, positive-unit). We show that backdoor detection is fixed-parameter tractable for the considered target classes, and backdoor evaluation is either fixed-parameter tractable, in \({\mathrm {para}}\text {-}\varDelta ^P_2\), or in \({\mathrm {para}}\text {-}\mathrm {NP}\), depending on the target class.

An SMT Approach to Fractional Hypertree Width

Bounded fractional hypertree width ( Open image in new window ) is the most general known structural property that guarantees polynomial-time solvability of the constraint satisfaction problem. Bounded Open image in new window generalizes other structural properties like bounded induced width and bounded hypertree width.

Default Logic and Bounded Treewidth

In this paper, we study Reiters propositional default logic when the treewidth of a certain graph representation (semi-primal graph) of the input theory is bounded. We establish a dynamic programming algorithm on tree decompositions that decides whether a theory has a consistent stable extension (Ext). Our algorithm can even be used to enumerate all generating defaults (ExtEnum) that lead to stable extensions. We show that our algorithm decides Ext in linear time in the input theory and triple exponential time in the treewidth (so-called fixed-parameter linear algorithm). Further, our algorithm solves ExtEnum with a pre-computation step that is linear in the input theory and triple exponential in the treewidth followed by a linear delay to output solutions.