Abstract

In this paper, we describe an architecture for resource guided concurrent mechanised deduction which is motivated by some findings in cognitive science. Its benefits are illustrated by comparing it with traditional proof search techniques. In particular, we introduce the notion of focused search and show that a reasoning system can be built as the cooperative collection of concurrently acting specialised problem solvers. These reasoners typically perform well in a particular problem domain. The system architecture that we describe assesses the subgoals of a theorem and distributes them to the specialised solvers that look the most promising. Furthermore it allocates resources (above all computation time and memory) to the specialised reasoners. This technique is referred to as resource management. Each reasoner terminates its search for a solution of a given subgoal when the solution is found or when it runs out of its assigned resources. We argue that the effect of resource ma...

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