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Computing with SAT Oracles: Past, Present and Future

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Sailing Routes in the World of Computation (CiE 2018)

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Abstract

Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) epitomizes NP-completeness, and so what is arguably the best known class of intractable problems. NP-complete decision problems are pervasive in all areas of computing, with literally thousands of well-known examples. Nevertheless, SAT solvers routinely challenge the problem’s intractability by solving propositional formulas with millions of variables, many representing the translation from some other NP-complete or NP-hard problem. The practical effectiveness of SAT solvers has motivated their use as oracles for NP, enabling new algorithms that solve an ever-increasing range of hard computational problems. This paper provides a brief overview of this ongoing effort, summarizing some of the recent past and present main successes, and highlighting directions for future research.

This work was supported by FCT grant ABSOLV (028986/02/SAICT/2017), and LASIGE Research Unit, ref. UID/CEC/00408/2013.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The paper aims to highlight the many uses of SAT oracles, and so the list of references does not aim to be exhaustive. Additional references can be found in the references cited.

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  1. LASIGE, Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Joao Marques-Silva

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  1. Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Florin Manea

  2. Queens College, CUNY, Queens, New York, USA

    Russell G. Miller

  3. Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

    Dirk Nowotka

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Marques-Silva, J. (2018). Computing with SAT Oracles: Past, Present and Future. In: Manea, F., Miller, R., Nowotka, D. (eds) Sailing Routes in the World of Computation. CiE 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10936. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94418-0_27

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