Jordi Levy

Solving (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT through Satisfiability Testing

Recently, Fu and Malik described an unweighted Partial MaxSAT solver based on successive calls to a SAT solver. At the k th iteration the SAT solver tries to certify that there exist an assignment that satisfies all but k clauses. Later Marques-Silva and Planes implemented and extended these ideas. In this paper we present and implement two Partial MaxSAT solvers and the weighted variant of one of them. Both are based on Fu and Malik ideas. We prove the correctness of our algorithm and compare our solver with other (Weighted) MaxSAT and (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT solvers.

SAT-based MaxSAT algorithms

Many industrial optimization problems can be translated to MaxSAT. Although the general problem is NP hard, like SAT, many practical problems may be solved using modern MaxSAT solvers. In this paper we present several algorithms specially designed to deal with industrial or real problems. All of them are based on the idea of solving MaxSAT through successive calls to a SAT solver. We show that this SAT-based technique is efficient in solving industrial problems. In fact, all state-of-the-art MaxSAT solvers that perform well in industrial instances are based on this technique. In particular, our solvers won the 2009 partial MaxSAT and the 2011 weighted partial MaxSAT industrial categories of the MaxSAT evaluation. We prove the correctness of all our algorithms. We also present a complete experimental study comparing the performance of our algorithms with latest MaxSAT solvers.

The community structure of SAT formulas

The research community on complex networks has developed techniques of analysis and algorithms that can be used by the SAT community to improve our knowledge about the structure of industrial SAT instances. It is often argued that modern SAT solvers are able to exploit this hidden structure, without a precise definition of this notion. In this paper, we show that most industrial SAT instances have a high modularity that is not present in random instances. We also show that successful techniques, like learning, (indirectly) take into account this community structure. Our experimental study reveal that most learnt clauses are local on one of those modules or communities.

Nominal Unification from a Higher-Order Perspective

Nominal logic is an extension of first-order logic with equality, name-binding, renaming via name-swapping and freshness of names. Contrarily to lambda-terms, in nominal terms, bindable names, called atoms, and instantiable variables are considered as distinct entities. Moreover, atoms are capturable by instantiations, breaking a fundamental principle of the lambda-calculus. Despite these differences, nominal unification can be seen from a higher-order perspective. From this view, we show that nominal unification can be quadratically reduced to a particular fragment of higher-order unification problems: higher-order pattern unification. We also prove that the translation preserves most generality of unifiers.

Improving SAT-Based weighted MaxSAT solvers

In the last few years, there has been a significant effort in designing and developing efficient Weighted MaxSAT solvers. We study in detail the WPM1 algorithm identifying some weaknesses and proposing solutions to mitigate them. Basically, WPM1 is based on iteratively calling a SAT solver and adding blocking variables and cardinality constraints to relax the unsatisfiable cores returned by the SAT solver. We firstly identify and study how to break the symmetries introduced by the blocking variables and cardinality constraints. Secondly, we study how to prioritize the discovery of higher quality cores. We present an extensive experimental investigation comparing the new algorithm with state-of-the-art solvers showing that our approach makes WPM1 much more competitive.

A complete calculus for Max-SAT

Max-SAT is the problem of finding an assignment minimizing the number of unsatisfied clauses of a given CNF formula. We propose a resolution-like calculus for Max-SAT and prove its soundness and completeness. We also prove the completeness of some refinements of this calculus. From the completeness proof we derive an exact algorithm for Max-SAT and a time upper bound.

Improving WPM2 for (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT

Weighted Partial MaxSAT (WPMS) is an optimization variant of the Satisfiability (SAT) problem. Several combinatorial optimization problems can be translated into WPMS. In this paper we extend the state-of-the-art WPM2 algorithm by adding several improvements, and implement it on top of an SMT solver. In particular, we show that by focusing search on solving to optimality subformulas of the original WPMS instance we increase the efficiency of WPM2. From the experimental evaluation we conducted on the PMS and WPMS instances at the 2012 MaxSAT Evaluation, we can conclude that the new approach is both the best performing for industrial instances, and for the union of industrial and crafted instances. This research has been partially founded by the CICYT research projects TASSAT (TIN2010-20967-C04-01/03/04) and ARINF (TIN2009-14704-C03-01).

On the structure of industrial SAT instances

During this decade, it has been observed that many realworld graphs, like the web and some social and metabolic networks, have a scale-free structure. These graphs are characterized by a big variability in the arity of nodes, that seems to follow a power-law distribution. This came as a big surprise to researchers steeped in the tradition of classical random networks. SAT instances can also be seen as (bi-partite) graphs. In this paper we study many families of industrial SAT instances used in SAT competitions, and show that most of them also present this scale-free structure. On the contrary, random SAT instances, viewed as graphs, are closer to the classical random graph model, where arity of nodes follows a Poisson distribution with small variability. This would explain their distinct nature. We also analyze what happens when we instantiate a fraction of the variables, at random or using some heuristics, and how the scale-free structure is modified by these instantiations. Finally, we study how the structure is modified during the execution of a SAT solver, concluding that the scale-free structure is preserved.

An Efficient Nominal Unification Algorithm

Nominal Unification is an extension of first-order unification where terms can contain binders and unification is performed modulo α equivalence. Here we prove that the existence of nominal unifiers can be decided in quadratic time. First, we linearly-reduce nominal unification problems to a sequence of freshness and equalities between atoms, modulo a permutation, using ideas as Paterson and Wegman for first-order unification. Second, we prove that solvability of these reduced problems may be checked in quadratic time. Finally, we point out how using ideas of Brown and Tarjan for unbalanced merging, we could solve these reduced problems more efficiently

The Complexity of Monadic Second-Order Unification

Monadic second-order unification is second-order unification where all function constants occurring in the equations are unary. Here we prove that the problem of deciding whether a set of monadic equations has a unifier is NP-complete, where we use the technique of compressing solutions using singleton context-free grammars. We prove that monadic second-order matching is also NP-complete.