An adaptive prefix-assignment technique for symmetry reduction

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Access rights

openAccess
publishedVersion

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2020-08

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

29

Series

Journal of Symbolic Computation, Volume 99, pp. 21-49

Abstract

This paper presents a technique for symmetry reduction that adaptively assigns a prefix of variables in a system of constraints so that the generated prefix-assignments are pairwise nonisomorphic under the action of the symmetry group of the system. The technique is based on McKay's canonical extension framework (McKay, 1998). Among key features of the technique are (i) adaptability—the prefix sequence can be user-prescribed and truncated for compatibility with the group of symmetries; (ii) parallelizability—prefix-assignments can be processed in parallel independently of each other; (iii) versatility—the method is applicable whenever the group of symmetries can be concisely represented as the automorphism group of a vertex-colored graph; and (iv) implementability—the method can be implemented relying on a canonical labeling map for vertex-colored graphs as the only nontrivial subroutine. To demonstrate the practical applicability of our technique, we have prepared an experimental open-source implementation of the technique and carry out a set of experiments that demonstrate ability to reduce symmetry on hard instances. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the implementation effectively parallelizes to compute clusters with multiple nodes via a message-passing interface.

Description

Keywords

Canonical extension, Constraint programming, Isomorph rejection, SAT, Symmetry breaking, Symmetry reduction

Other note

Citation

Junttila, T, Karppa, M, Kaski, P & Kohonen, J 2020, ' An adaptive prefix-assignment technique for symmetry reduction ', Journal of Symbolic Computation, vol. 99, pp. 21-49 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsc.2019.03.002