A Decision-Making Procedure for Resolution-Based SAT-Solvers

We describe a new decision-making procedure for resolutionbased SAT-solvers called Decision Making with a Reference Point (DMRP). In DMRP, a complete assignment called a reference point is maintained. DMRP is aimed at finding a change of the reference point under which the number of clauses falsified by the modified point is smaller than for the original one. DMRP makes it possible for a DPLL-like algorithm to perform a ”local search strategy”. We describe a SAT-algorithm with conflict clause learning that uses DMRP. Experimental results show that even a straightforward and unoptimized implementation of this algorithm is competitive with SAT-solvers like BerkMin and Minisat on practical formulas. Interestingly, DMRP is beneficial not only for satisfiable but also for unsatisfiable formulas.