Abstract

A new algorithm for testing satisfiability of propositional formulas in conjunctive normal form (CNF) is described. It applies reasoning in the form of certain resolution operations, and identification of equivalent literals. Resolution produces growth in the size of the formula, but within a global quadratic bound; most previous methods avoid operations that produce any growth, and generally do not identify equivalent literals. Computational experience indicates that the method does substantially less "guessing" than previously reported algorithms, while keeping a polynomial time bound on the work done between guesses. Experiments indicate that, for larger problems, the time investment in reasoning returns a profit in reduced searching, and the profit increases with increasing problem size. Experimental data compares six branching strategies of the proposed algorithm on a variety of problems, including several Dimacs benchmarks. These branching strategies were shown to perform differently with statistical signi cance. A new scheme based on Johnson's maximum satisfiability approximation algorithm was found to be the best overall. Both satisfiable and unsatifi able random 3-CNF formulas with 50-283 variables and 4.27 ratio of clauses to variables have been tested; this class is generally acknowledged to be relatively "hard" and

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