提出新算法寻找最短不可满足性证明,可缩短现有证明30%-60%。
How To Discover Short, Shorter, and the Shortest Proofs of Unsatisfiability: A Branch-and-Bound Approach for Resolution Proof Length Minimization
- 用分层列表表示证明,打破排列对称性以优化搜索
- 在SAT竞赛2002数据集上将证明长度减少30%-60%
- 适合需要最小化证明长度的验证与形式化推理场景
现代命题可满足性求解器不仅输出可满足/不可满足判断,还能提供基于归结的不可满足性证明,常用于验证。尽管当前求解器生成的证明相对较短,但并无保证其无法进一步压缩。本文提出一种新的分支定界算法,用于寻找最短归结证明;为此,引入一种按间接层级分组子句的分层列表表示法,有效打破所有排列对称性,优于现有对称性破除方法,并指导设计新型证明最小化流程。此外,设计了基于证明长度下界、子句可消去性和支配关系的剪枝策略。实验表明,在SAT竞赛2002的实例上,现有求解器生成的证明可缩短30%-60%;在小型合成公式上缩短25%-50%。作为最短证明查找算法,本方法求解实例数是此前基于SAT求解的方法的两倍,且对两者均能求解的实例,达到最优解时间降低数个数量级。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Modern software for propositional satisfiability problems gives a powerful automated reasoning toolkit, capable of outputting not only a satisfiable/unsatisfiable signal but also a justification of unsatisfiability in the form of resolution proof (or a more expressive proof), which is commonly used for verification purposes. Empirically, modern SAT solvers produce relatively short proofs, however, there are no inherent guarantees that these proofs cannot be significantly reduced. This paper proposes a novel branch-and-bound algorithm for finding the shortest resolution proofs; to this end, we introduce a layer list representation of proofs that groups clauses by their level of indirection. As we show, this representation breaks all permutational symmetries, thereby improving upon the state-of-the-art symmetry-breaking and informing the design of a novel workflow for proof minimization. In addition to that, we design pruning procedures that reason on proof length lower bound, clause subsumption, and dominance. Our experiments suggest that the proofs from state-of-the-art solvers could be shortened by 30-60% on the instances from SAT Competition 2002 and by 25-50% on small synthetic formulas. When treated as an algorithm for finding the shortest proof, our approach solves twice as many instances as the previous work based on SAT solving and reduces the time to optimality by orders of magnitude for the instances solved by both approaches.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。