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Chronological Backtracking

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Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing – SAT 2018 (SAT 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10929))

Abstract

Non-Chronological Backtracking (NCB) has been implemented in every modern CDCL SAT solver since the original CDCL solver GRASP. NCB’s importance has never been questioned. This paper argues that NCB is not always helpful. We show how one can implement the alternative to NCB–Chronological Backtracking (CB)–in a modern SAT solver. We demonstrate that CB improves the performance of the winner of the latest SAT Competition, Maple_LCM_Dist, and the winner of the latest MaxSAT Evaluation Open-WBO.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the standard algorithm, cl is always equal to the current decision level, but, as we shall see, that is not the case for CB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intel Corporation, P.O. Box 1659, 31015, Haifa, Israel

    Alexander Nadel & Vadim Ryvchin

Authors
  1. Alexander Nadel
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  2. Vadim Ryvchin
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Correspondence to Vadim Ryvchin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

    Olaf Beyersdorff

  2. Microsoft Research Ltd., Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Christoph M. Wintersteiger

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Nadel, A., Ryvchin, V. (2018). Chronological Backtracking. In: Beyersdorff, O., Wintersteiger, C. (eds) Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing – SAT 2018. SAT 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10929. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94144-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94144-8_7

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