论文标题
要了解SLS算法的长尾部运行时间
Towards an Understanding of Long-Tailed Runtimes of SLS Algorithms
论文作者
论文摘要
令人满意的问题是计算机科学中最著名的问题之一。它的NP完整性已被用来争辩SAT是棘手的。但是,已经取得了巨大的进步,使SAT求解器可以解决数百万变量的实例。随机搜索是一个特别成功的范式。 在大多数情况下,有不同的方式来制定基本问题。虽然众所周知,这会影响求解器的运行时间,但找到有用的配方通常是不平凡的。最近引入的Gapsat求解器[Lorenz和Wörz2020]展示了一种成功的方法,可以通过学习逻辑上需要从原始问题中学习的其他信息来提高SLS求解器的性能。尽管如此,在某些情况下,性能略有恶化。这证明了对学习逻辑含义如何影响SLS的运行时间的深入研究。 在这项工作中,我们提出了一种产生逻辑上等效问题的方法,从而推广了gapapat的思想。这允许对SLS求解器的运行时间的影响进行严格的数学研究。如果修改过程被视为随机的,则约翰逊SB分布提供了对硬度的完美表征。由于观察到的Johnson SB分布接近对数正态分布,因此我们的分析还表明硬度是长尾的。作为第二个贡献,我们从理论上证明重新启动对于长尾分布有用。这意味着其他重新启动可以进一步完善采用上述修改技术的所有算法。由于实证研究令人难以置信地表明,运行时分布遵循约翰逊SB分布,因此我们从理论上研究了这一属性。我们成功地证明了Schönin的随机步行算法的运行时间大约是Johnson SB。
The satisfiability problem is one of the most famous problems in computer science. Its NP-completeness has been used to argue that SAT is intractable. However, there have been tremendous advances that allow SAT solvers to solve instances with millions of variables. A particularly successful paradigm is stochastic local search. In most cases, there are different ways of formulating the underlying problem. While it is known that this has an impact on the runtime of solvers, finding a helpful formulation is generally non-trivial. The recently introduced GapSAT solver [Lorenz and Wörz 2020] demonstrated a successful way to improve the performance of an SLS solver on average by learning additional information which logically entails from the original problem. Still, there were cases in which the performance slightly deteriorated. This justifies in-depth investigations into how learning logical implications affects runtimes for SLS. In this work, we propose a method for generating logically equivalent problem formulations, generalizing the ideas of GapSAT. This allows a rigorous mathematical study of the effect on the runtime of SLS solvers. If the modification process is treated as random, Johnson SB distributions provide a perfect characterization of the hardness. Since the observed Johnson SB distributions approach lognormal distributions, our analysis also suggests that the hardness is long-tailed. As a second contribution, we theoretically prove that restarts are useful for long-tailed distributions. This implies that additional restarts can further refine all algorithms employing above mentioned modification technique. Since the empirical studies compellingly suggest that the runtime distributions follow Johnson SB distributions, we investigate this property theoretically. We succeed in proving that the runtimes for Schöning's random walk algorithm are approximately Johnson SB.