Mechanical verification of SAT refutations with extended resolution

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. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.