Measuring the Hardness of SAT Instances

The search of a precise measure of what hardness of SAT instances means for state-of-the-art solvers is a relevant research question. Among others, the space complexity of tree-like resolution (also called hardness), the minimal size of strong backdoors and of cycle-cutsets, and the treewidth can be used for this purpose. We propose the use of the tree-like space complexity as a solid candidate to be the best measure for solvers based on DPLL. To support this thesis we provide a comparison with the other mentioned measures. We also conduct an experimental investigation to show how the proposed measure characterizes the hardness of random and industrial instances. Source URL: https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/node/55327 Links [1] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/staff/carlos-ans%C3%B3tegui [2] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/staff/mar%C3%ADa-luisa-bonet [3] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/staff/jordi-levy [4] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/staff/felip-many%C3%A0 [5] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/bibliography?f[author]=1092 [6] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/staff/carla-gomes [7] https://www.iiia.csic.es/en/bibliography?f[keyword]=665