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Formula partitioning revisited

16 pagesPublished: July 28, 2014

Abstract

Dividing a Boolean formula into smaller independent sub-formulae can be a useful technique for accelerating the solution of Boolean problems, including SAT and #SAT. Nevertheless, and despite promising early results, formula partitioning is hardly used in state-of-the-art solvers. In this paper, we show that this is rooted in a lack of consistency of the usefulness of formula partitioning techniques. In particular, we evaluate two existing and a novel partitioning model, coupled with two existing and two novel partitioning algorithms, on a wide range of benchmark instances. Our results show that there is no one-size-fits-all solution: for different formula types, different partitioning models and algorithms are the most suitable. While these results might seem negative, they help to improve our understanding about formula partitioning; moreover, the findings also give some guidance as to which method to use for what kinds of formulae.

Keyphrases: CNF partitioning, Divide and Conquer, Fiduccia-Mattheyses algorithm, hypergraph partitioning, SAT partitioning

In: Daniel Le Berre (editor). POS-14. Fifth Pragmatics of SAT workshop, vol 27, pages 41--56

Links:
BibTeX entry
@inproceedings{POS-14:Formula_partitioning_revisited,
  author    = {Zoltan Mann and Pal Papp},
  title     = {Formula partitioning revisited},
  booktitle = {POS-14. Fifth Pragmatics of SAT workshop},
  editor    = {Daniel Le Berre},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {27},
  pages     = {41--56},
  year      = {2014},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {https://easychair.org/publications/paper/SD},
  doi       = {10.29007/9skn}}
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