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Mechanical Verification of SAT Refutations with Extended Resolution

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 7998))

Abstract

We present a mechanically-verified proof checker developed with the ACL2 theorem-proving system that is general enough to support the growing variety of increasingly complex satisfiability (SAT) solver techniques, including those based on extended resolution. A common approach to assure the correctness of SAT solvers is to emit a proof of unsatisfiability when no solution is reported to exist. Contemporary proof checkers only check logical equivalence using resolution-style inference. However, some state-of-the-art, conflict-driven clause-learning SAT solvers use preprocessing, inprocessing, and learning techniques, that cannot be checked solely by resolution-style inference. We have developed a mechanically-verified proof checker that assures refutation clauses preserve satisfiability. We believe our approach is sufficiently expressive to validate all known SAT-solver techniques.

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Wetzler, N., Heule, M.J.H., Hunt, W.A. (2013). Mechanical Verification of SAT Refutations with Extended Resolution. In: Blazy, S., Paulin-Mohring, C., Pichardie, D. (eds) Interactive Theorem Proving. ITP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7998. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39634-2_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39634-2_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39633-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39634-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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