Adaptation in a CBR-based solver portfolio for the satisfiability problem

Abstract

The satisfiability problem was amongst the very first problems proven to be NP-Complete. It arises in many real world domains such as hardware verification, planning, scheduling, configuration and telecommunications. Recently, there has been growing interest in using portfolios of solvers for this problem. In this paper we present a case-based reasoning approach to SAT solving. A key challenge is the adaptation phase, which we focus on in some depth. We present a variety of adaptation approaches, some heuristic, and one that computes an optimal Kemeny ranking over solvers in our portfolio. Our evaluation over three large case bases of problem instances from artificial, hand-crafted and industrial domains, shows the power of a CBR approach, and the importance of the adaptation schemes used. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.