Soft Clauses Research Articles

Enhance Diversified Top-k MaxSAT Solving by Incorporating New Strategy for Generating Diversified Initial Assignments (Student Abstract)

The Diversified Top-k MaxSAT (DTKMS) problem is an extension of MaxSAT. The objective of DTKMS is to find k feasible assignments of a given formula, such that each assignment satisfies all hard clauses and the k assignments together satisfy the maximum number of soft clauses. This paper presents a local search algorithm, DTKMS-DIA, which incorporates a new approach to generating initial assignments. Experimental results indicate that DTKMS-DIA can achieve attractive performance on 826 instances compared with state-of-the-art solvers.

NuWLS: Improving Local Search for (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT by New Weighting Techniques

Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) is a prototypical constraint optimization problem, and its generalized version is the (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT problem, denoted as (W)PMS, which deals with hard and soft clauses. Considerable progress has been made on stochastic local search (SLS) algorithms for solving (W)PMS, which mainly focus on clause weighting techniques. In this work, we identify two issues of existing clause weighting techniques for (W)PMS, and propose two ideas correspondingly. First, we observe that the initial values of soft clause weights have a big effect on the performance of the SLS solver for solving (W)PMS, and propose a weight initialization method. Second, we propose a new clause weighting scheme that for the first time employs different conditions for updating hard and soft clause weights. Based on these two ideas, we develop a new SLS solver for (W)PMS named NuWLS. Through extensive experiments, NuWLS performs much better than existing SLS solvers on all 6 benchmarks from the incomplete tracks of MaxSAT Evaluations (MSEs) 2019, 2020, and 2021. In terms of the number of winning instances, NuWLS outperforms state-of-the-art SAT-based incomplete solvers on all the 6 benchmarks. More encouragingly, a hybrid solver that combines NuWLS and an SAT-based solver won all four categories in the incomplete track of the MaxSAT Evaluation 2022.

Modeling and Solving Scheduling in Overloaded Situations with Weighted Partial MaxSAT

In real-time systems, where tasks have timing requirements, once the workload exceeds the system’s capacity, missed due dates may cause system overload. In this situation, finding an optimal scheduling that minimizes the cumulative values of late tasks is critical in both theory and practice. Recently, formalizing scheduling problems as a class of generalized problems, such as Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) and Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT), has been receiving immense concern. Enlightened by the high efficiency of these satisfiability-based methods, this paper formulates the single-machine scheduling problem of minimizing the total weight of late tasks as a Weighted Partial Maximum (WPM) Satisfiability problem. In the formulation, scheduling features are encoded as rigidly enforced hard clauses and the scheduling objective is treated as a set of weighted soft ones. Then an off-the-shelf WPM solver is exploited to maximize the total weight of the satisfied soft clauses, provided that all the hard clauses are satisfied. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with the existing satisfiability-based methods, the proposed method significantly improves the efficiency of identifying the optimal schedule. Moreover, we make minor changes to apply the WPM formulation to parallel-machine scheduling, showing that the proposed method is sufficiently flexible and well scalable.

Open-WBO-Inc: Approximation Strategies for Incomplete Weighted MaxSAT

Incomplete MaxSAT solving aims to quickly find a solution that attempts to minimize the sum of the weights of unsatisfied soft clauses without providing any optimality guarantees. In this paper, we propose two approximation strategies for improving i

NuDist: An Efficient Local Search Algorithm for (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT

Abstract Maximum satisfiability (MaxSAT) is the optimization version of the satisfiability (SAT). Partial MaxSAT (PMS) generalizes SAT and MaxSAT by introducing hard and soft clauses, while Weighted PMS (WPMS) is the weighted version of PMS where each soft clause has a weight. These two problems have many important real-world applications. Local search is a popular method for solving (W)PMS. Recently, significant progress has been made in this direction by tailoring local search for (W)PMS, and a representative algorithm is the Dist algorithm. In this paper, we propose two ideas to improve Dist, including a clause-weighting scheme and a variable-selection heuristic. The resulting algorithm is called NuDist. Extensive experiments on PMS and WPMS benchmarks from the MaxSAT Evaluations (MSE) 2016 and 2017 show that NuDist significantly outperforms state-of-the-art local search solvers and performs better than state-of-the-art complete solvers including Open-WBO and WPM3 on MSE 2017 benchmarks. Also, empirical analyses confirm the effectiveness of the proposed ideas.

Partial maximum satisfiability problem method combined with structure characteristics for diagnostic problems

Partial MaxSAT (PMS) is a generalized version of the maximum satisfiability problem (MaxSAT), which has important applications in many fields. At present, the PMS algorithm requires improvements in solving the industrial problems. Based on deep research on the PMS algorithm using random search, this paper presents a structure characteristics partial MaxSAT (SCPMS) method that combines structural feature exploration. First, according to the unit propagation rules and structural features of the problem, we gradually divide the PMS clause into two parts to construct a subproblem that can satisfy the problem due to the absence of the hard unit clause. In this paper, a random search guidance strategy is proposed. The new subproblem is reused to identify the hard-blocking variable in the hard unit clause of the original problem using unit propagation. Then, the corresponding soft-blocking variable is reversed with the feature of the clause to improve the efficiency of the random search. The experimental results show that in comparison with the two latest algorithms, DeciDist and DistUp, the proposed SCPMS greatly reduces the number of unsatisfied soft clauses in solving model-based diagnosis instances.

A Study on the Types and Measures of Letter of Credit Soft Clauses in China

A Study on the Types and Measures of Letter of Credit Soft Clauses in China

An FPGA Solver for Partial MaxSAT Problems Based on Stochastic Local Search

In this paper, we propose an FPGA solver for partial maximum satisfiability (PMS) problems based on the Dist algorithm, which is one of the best performing stochastic local search algorithms for PMS problems. The Dist algorithm searches for a truth assignment for the variables that satisfies all of the hard clauses and as many soft clauses as possible by iteratively selecting a variable using a heuristic and flipping its truth value. During each iteration, new candidate variables for flipping are generated and existing ones may disappear. In our solver, the variables that may become new candidates for flipping are evaluated by parallel and pipeline processing, and then only the variables that actually become the candidates for flipping are extracted and gathered up in concurrent with the pipeline processing. The extraction process is not influenced by the number of the new candidates or their random generation, which minimizes the disturbance of the parallel and pipeline processing. Our FPGA solver can solve large PMS problems up to 7.74 times faster than running Dist on CPU.

A Study on the Types and Countermeasures of Soft Clauses in Relation to Goods Inspection in Letter of Credit Transactions

A Study on the Types and Countermeasures of Soft Clauses in Relation to Goods Inspection in Letter of Credit Transactions

New local search methods for partial MaxSAT

Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) is the optimization version of the Satisfiability (SAT) problem. Partial Maximum Satisfiability (PMS) is a generalization of MaxSAT which involves hard and soft clauses and has important real world applications. Local search is a popular approach to solving SAT and MaxSAT and has witnessed great success in these two problems. However, unfortunately, local search algorithms for PMS do not benefit much from local search techniques for SAT and MaxSAT, mainly due to the fact that it contains both hard and soft clauses. This feature makes it more challenging to design efficient local search algorithms for PMS, which is likely the reason of the stagnation of this direction in more than one decade.In this paper, we propose a number of new ideas for local search for PMS, which mainly rely on the distinction between hard and soft clauses. The first three ideas, including weighting for hard clauses, separating hard and soft score, and a variable selection heuristic based on hard and soft score, are used to develop a local search algorithm for PMS called Dist. The fourth idea, which uses unit propagation with priority on hard unit clauses to generate the initial assignment, is used to improve Dist on industrial instances, leading to the DistUP algorithm.The effectiveness of our solvers and ideas is illustrated through experimental evaluations on all PMS benchmarks from the MaxSAT Evaluation 2014. According to our experimental results, Dist shows a significant improvement over previous local search solvers on all benchmarks. We also compare our solvers with state-of-the-art complete PMS solvers and a state-of-the-art portfolio solver, and the results show that our solvers have better performance in random and crafted instances but worse in industrial instances. The good performance of Dist has also been confirmed by the fact that Dist won all random and crafted categories of PMS and Weighted PMS in the incomplete solvers track of the MaxSAT Evaluation 2014.

An Exact Algorithm Based on MaxSAT Reasoning for the Maximum Weight Clique Problem

Recently, MaxSAT reasoning is shown very effective in computing a tight upper bound for a Maximum Clique (MC) of a (unweighted) graph. In this paper, we apply MaxSAT reasoning to compute a tight upper bound for a Maximum Weight Clique (MWC) of a wighted graph. We first study three usual encodings of MWC into weighted partial MaxSAT dealing with hard clauses, which must be satisfied in all solutions, and soft clauses, which are weighted and can be falsified. The drawbacks of these encodings motivate us to propose an encoding of MWC into a special weighted partial MaxSAT formalism, called LW (Literal-Weighted) encoding and dedicated for upper bounding an MWC, in which both soft clauses and literals in soft clauses are weighted. An optimal solution of the LW MaxSAT instance gives an upper bound for an MWC, instead of an optimal solution for MWC. We then introduce two notions called the Top-k literal failed clause and the Top-k empty clause to extend classical MaxSAT reasoning techniques, as well as two sound transformation rules to transform an LW MaxSAT instance. Successive transformations of an LW MaxSAT instance driven by MaxSAT reasoning give a tight upper bound for the encoded MWC. The approach is implemented in a branch-and-bound algorithm called MWCLQ. Experimental evaluations on the broadly used DIMACS benchmark, BHOSLIB benchmark, random graphs and the benchmark from the winner determination problem show that our approach allows MWCLQ to reduce the search space significantly and to solve MWC instances effectively. Consequently, MWCLQ outperforms state-of-the-art exact algorithms on the vast majority of instances. Moreover, it is surprisingly effective in solving hard and dense instances.

Quantified maximum satisfiability

In recent years, there have been significant improvements in algorithms both for Quantified Boolean Formulas (QBF) and for Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT). This paper studies an optimization extension of QBF and considers the problem in a quantified MaxSAT setting. More precisely, the general QMaxSAT problem is defined for QBFs with a set of soft clausal constraints and consists in finding the largest subset of the soft constraints such that the remaining QBF is true. Two approaches are investigated. One is based on relaxing the soft clauses and performing an iterative search on the cost function. The other approach, which is the main contribution of the paper, is inspired by recent work on MaxSAT, and exploits the iterative identification of unsatisfiable cores. The paper investigates the application of these approaches to the two concrete problems of computing smallest minimal unsatisfiable subformulas (SMUS) and smallest minimal equivalent subformulas (SMES), decision versions of which are well-known problems in the second level of the polynomial hierarchy. Experimental results, obtained on representative problem instances, indicate that the core-guided approach for the SMUS and SMES problems outperforms the use of iterative search over the values of the cost function. More significantly, the core-guided approach to SMUS also outperforms the state-of-the-art SMUS extractor Digger.

Improving linear search algorithms with model-based approaches for MaxSAT solving

Linear search algorithms have been shown to be particularly effective for solving partial Maximum Satisfiability (MaxSAT) problem instances. These algorithms start by adding a new relaxation variable to each soft clause and solving the resulting formula with a SAT solver. Whenever a Model is found, a new constraint on the relaxation variables is added such that Models with a greater or equal value are excluded. However, if the problem instance has a large number of relaxation variables, then adding a new constraint over these variables can lead to the exploration of a much larger search space. This article proposes new algorithms to improve the performance of linear search algorithms for MaxSAT by using Models found by the SAT solver to partition the relaxation variables. These algorithms add a new constraint on a subset of relaxation variables, thus intensifying the search on that subspace. In addition, the proposed algorithms are further enhanced by using incremental approaches where learned clauses are kept between calls to the SAT solver. Experimental results show that Model-based algorithms can outperform a classic linear search algorithm in several problem instances. Moreover, incremental approaches further improve the performance of linear search and Model-based algorithms for MaxSAT. Overall, Model-based algorithms are competitive with state-of-the-art MaxSAT solvers, and can improve their performance when solving problem instances with a large number of soft clauses.

MaxSAT-based encodings for Group MaxSAT

Weighted Partial MaxSAT (WPMS) is a well-known optimization variant of Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) that finds a wide range of practical applications. WPMS divides the formula in two sets of clauses: The hard clauses that must be satisfied and the soft clauses that can be falsified with a penalty given by their associated weight. However, some applications may require each original constraint to be modeled as a set or group of clauses. Then, the cost or penalty of falsifying one or several clauses of the same group is exactly the same. The resulting formalism is referred to as Group MaxSAT. This paper overviews Group MaxSAT, and shows how several optimization problems can be modeled as Group MaxSAT. Several encodings from Group MaxSAT to standard MaxSAT are formalized and refined. A comprehensive empirical study compares the performance of several MaxSAT solvers with the proposed encodings. The results indicate that, depending on the underlying MaxSAT solver and problem domain, the solver may perform better with a given encoding than with the others.

Maximum Satisfiability Using Core-Guided MaxSAT Resolution

Core-guided approaches to solving MAXSAT have proved to be effective on industrial problems. These approaches solve a MAXSAT formula by building a sequence of SAT formulas, where in each formula a greater weight of soft clauses can be relaxed. The soft clauses are relaxed via the addition of blocking variables, and the total weight of soft clauses that can be relaxed is limited by placing constraints on the blocking variables. In this work we propose an alternative approach. Our approach also builds a sequence of new SAT formulas. However, these formulas are constructed using MAXSAT resolution, a sound rule of inference for MAXSAT. MAXSAT resolution can in the worst case cause a quadratic blowup in the formula, so we propose a new compressed version of MAXSAT resolution. Using compressed MAXSAT resolution our new core-guided solver improves the state-of-theart, solving significantly more problems than other state-ofthe-art solvers on the industrial benchmarks used in the 2013 MAXSAT Solver Evaluation.

Tailoring Local Search for Partial MaxSAT

Partial MaxSAT (PMS) is a generalization to SAT and MaxSAT. Many real world problems can be encoded into PMS in a more natural and compact way than SAT and MaxSAT. In this paper, we propose new ideas for local search for PMS, which mainly rely on the distinction between hard and soft clauses. We use these ideas to develop a local search PMS algorithm called {\it Dist}. Experimental results on PMS benchmarks from MaxSAT Evaluation 2013 show that {\it Dist} significantly outperforms state-of-the-art PMS algorithms, including both local search algorithms and complete ones, on random and crafted benchmarks. For the industrial benchmark, {\it Dist} dramatically outperforms previous local search algorithms and is comparable with complete algorithms.

Relaxation Search: A Simple Way of Managing Optional Clauses

A number of problems involve managing a set of optional clauses. For example, the soft clauses in a MAXSAT formula are optional—they can be falsified for a cost. Similarly, when computing a Minimum Correction Set for an unsatisfiable formula, all clauses are optional—some can be falsified in order to satisfy the remaining. In both of these cases the task is to find a subset of the optional clauses that achieves some criteria, and whose removal leaves a satisfiable formula. Relaxation search is a simple method of using a standard SAT solver to solve this task. Relaxation search is easy to implement, sometimes requiring only a simple modification of the variable selection heuristic in the SAT solver; it offers considerable flexibility and control over the order in which subsets of optional clauses are examined; and it automatically exploits clause learning to exchange information between the two phases of finding a suitable subset of optional clauses and checking if their removal yields satisfiability. We demonstrate how relaxation search can be used to solve MAXSAT and to compute Minimum Correction Sets. In both cases relaxation search is able to achieve state-of-the-art performance and solve some instances other solvers are not able to solve.

Authorization query method for RBAC based on partial MAX-SAT solver

In order to ensure system security and reflect availability in authorization management,a method for querying authorization was proposed based on solvers for partial maximal satisfiability problem.Static authorization descriptions and dynamic mutually exclusive constraints were translated into hard clauses.The algorithm was adopted to update hard clauses and translate requested permissions into soft clauses.Soft clauses were effectively encoded,and the recursive algorithm was utilized to satisfy all hard clauses and as many soft clauses as possible.The experimental results show that the method can ensure system security,it follows the least privilege principle,and the query efficiency outperforms solvers for maximal satisfiability problem.

A Taxonomy of Exact Methods for Partial Max-SAT

Partial Maximum Boolean Satisfiability (Partial Max-SAT or PMSAT) is an optimization variant of Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problem, in which a variable assignment is required to satisfy all hard clauses and a maximum number of soft clauses in a Boolean formula. PMSAT is considered as an interesting encoding domain to many real-life problems for which a solution is acceptable even if some constraints are violated. Amongst the problems that can be formulated as such are planning and scheduling. New insights into the study of PMSAT problem have been gained since the introduction of the Max-SAT evaluations in 2006. Indeed, several PMSAT exact solvers have been developed based mainly on the Davis-Putnam-Logemann-Loveland (DPLL) procedure and Branch and Bound (B&B) algorithms. In this paper, we investigate and analyze a number of exact methods for PMSAT. We propose a taxonomy of the main exact methods within a general framework that integrates their various techniques into a unified perspective. We show its effectiveness by using it to classify PMSAT exact solvers which participated in the 2007 ~ 2011 Max-SAT evaluations, emphasizing on the most promising research directions.

Optimizing with minimum satisfiability

MinSAT is the problem of finding a truth assignment that minimizes the number of satisfied clauses in a CNF formula. When we distinguish between hard and soft clauses, and soft clauses have an associated weight, then the problem, called Weighted Partial MinSAT, consists in finding a truth assignment that satisfies all the hard clauses and minimizes the sum of weights of satisfied soft clauses. In this paper we describe a branch-and-bound solver for Weighted Partial MinSAT equipped with original upper bounds that exploit both clique partitioning algorithms and MaxSAT technology. Then, we report on an empirical investigation that shows that solving combinatorial optimization problems by reducing them to MinSAT is a competitive generic problem solving approach when solving MaxClique and combinatorial auction instances. Finally, we investigate an interesting correlation between the minimum number and the maximum number of satisfied clauses on random CNF formulae.