The Hard Problems Are Almost Everywhere For Random CNF-XOR Formulas

Abstract

Recent universal-hashing based approaches to sampling and counting crucially depend on the runtime performance of SAT~solvers on formulas expressed as the conjunction of both CNF constraints and variable-width XOR constraintsints (known as CNF-XOR formulas). In this paper, we present the first study of the runtime behavior of SAT~solvers equipped with XOR-reasoning techniques on random CNF-XOR formulas. We empirically demonstrate that a state-of-the-art SAT~solver scales exponentially on random CNF-XOR formulas across a wide range of XOR-clause densities, peaking around the empirical phase-transition location. On the theoretical front, we prove that the solution space of a random CNF-XOR formula `shatters’ at all nonzero XOR-clause densities into well-separated components, similar to the behavior seen in random CNF formulas known to be difficult for many SAT-solving algorithms.

Publication
In Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)