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Advances in parallel computing

Quantum Annealing and the Satisfiability Problem

Kristen L. Pudenz, Tallant Gregory S., Todd R. Belote, Adachi Steven H.

Published Jan 1, 2017• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The utility of satisfiability (SAT) as an application focused hard computational problem is well established. We explore the potential of quantum annealing to enhance classical SAT solving, especially where sampling from the space of all possible solutions is of interest. We address the formulation of SAT problems to make them suitable for commercial quantum annealers, practical concerns in their implementation, and how the performance of the resulting quantum solver compares to and complements classical SAT solvers.

DOI
10.3233/978-1-61499-816-7-253

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The utility of satisfiability (SAT) as an application focused hard computational problem is well established. We explore the potential of quantum annealing to enhance classical SAT solving, especially where sampling from the space of all possible solutions is of interest. We address the formulation of SAT problems to make them suitable for commercial quantum annealers, practical concerns in their implementation, and how the performance of the resulting quantum solver compares to and complements classical SAT solvers.
The utility of satisfiability (SAT) as an application focused hard computational problem is well established. We explore the potential of quantum annealing to enhance classical SAT solving, especially where sampling from the space of all possible solutions is of interest. We address the formulation of SAT problems to make them suitable for commercial quantum annealers, practical concerns in their implementation, and how the performance of the resulting quantum solver compares to and complements classical SAT solvers.
To date, conventional computers have never been able to efficiently handle certain tasks, where the number of computation steps is likely to blow up as the problem size increases. As an emerging technology and new computing paradigm, quantum computing has a great potential to tackle those hard tasks efficiently. Among all the existing quantum computation models, quantum annealing has drawn significant attention in recent years due to the realization of the commercialized quantum annealer, sparking research interests in developing applications to solve problems that are intractable for classical computers.However, designing and implementing algorithms that manage to harness the enormous computation power from quantum annealer remains a challenging task. Generally, it requires mapping of the given optimization problem into quadratic unconstrained binary optimization(QUBO) problem and embedding the subsequent QUBO onto the physical architecture of quantum annealer. Additionally, practical quantum annealers are susceptible to errors leading to low probability of the correct solution.In this study, we focus on solving Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problem using quantum annealer while addressing practical limitations. We have proposed a mapping technique that maps SAT problem to QUBO, and we have further devised a tool flow that embeds the QUBO onto the architecture of a quantum annealing device. Additionally, We have optimized the proposed embedding flow to reduce run-time in addition to shortening the qubit chain length, leading to robust quantum annealing. To further improve the reliability of quantum annealing, we have also developed a post processing embedding technique that enlarges the energy gap between ground state and the first excited state. To demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed methods, we have conducted experiments on real quantum annealing devices manufactured by D-Wave Systems, showing compelling result of using quantum annealer to solve SAT problem.
Quantum annealing device has shown a great potential in solving discrete problems that are theoretically and empirically hard. Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problem, determining if there is an assignment of variables that satisfies a given Boolean function, is the first proven NP-complete problem widely used in various domains. Here, we present a novel mapping of the SAT problem to the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem (QUBO), and further develop a tool flow embedding the proposed QUBO to the architecture of the commercialized quantum computer D-Wave. By leveraging electronic design automation techniques including synthesis, placement and routing, this is not only the first work providing the detail flow that embeds the QUBO, but also a technique scalable for real world applications and some hard SAT problems with over 6000 variables in QUBO. Based on our results, we discuss the challenges in solving SAT using the current generation of annealing device, and explore the problem solving capability of future quantum annealing computers.
The Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) is widely applied in modern tasks of microelectronics design automation. An important application of such a task is the design of logic circuits with specified characteristics from a given set of logic gates. To solve an SAT problem, both standard solvers and modern optimization tools can be used, including a relatively new hardware tool for solving the quantum annealing problem. The solution of this problem can be performed on a quantum annealing system by constructing a socalled Boolean network according to special rules and selecting an appropriate objective function. The article discusses the practical application of quantum annealing to the construction of short logic circuits by solving an SAT problem based on the methods proposed in the literature, and also analyzes the practical aspects of applying such methods to the construction of quantum circuits.
Satisfiability filters are a new and promising type of filters for set membership testing. In order to construct satisfiability filters, it is necessary to find disparate solutions to hard random k k -SAT problems. This paper compares simulated annealing, simulated quantum annealing and WalkSAT, an open-source SAT solver, in terms of their ability to find such solutions. The results indicate that solutions found by simulated quantum annealing are generally less disparate than solutions found by the other solvers and therefore less useful for the construction of satisfiability filters.
Quantum computing has emerged as a promising method for solving combinatorial optimization problems. These problems are often encoded as the Satisfiability (SAT) problem. In this study, we explore the quantum annealing based approach to solving the SAT problems. We conduct experiments on uniformly random 3-CNF instances that have 400 propositional variables and 1,000 to 2,499 clauses. We measure the time required to solve them using Fixstars Amplify Annealing Engine. The results show that the monotonic increase in solving time as the number of clauses increases, except for a discontinuity point at approximately 1,800 clauses. In addition, we observe some cases of false UNSAT reports. Our findings demonstrate both the characteristics and the limitations of this quantum annealing based solver. We plan to reproduce the solver on a local machine to inspect the performance when varying the parameters of the quantum annealing and the environment.