Algorithms for discrete function manipulation

Abstract

An investigation was made of the analogous graph structure for representing and manipulating discrete variable problems. The authors define the multi-valued decision diagram (MDD), analyze its properties (in particular prove a strong canonical form) and provide algorithms for combining and manipulating MDDs. They give a method for mapping an MDD into an equivalent BDD (binary decision diagram) which allows them to provide a highly efficient implementation using the previously developed BDD packages. A direct implementation of the MDD structure has also been carried out, but this initial implementation has not yet been tuned to the same extent as the BDDs to allow a reasonable comparison to be made. The authors have used the mapping to BDDs to provide an initial understanding of the limits on the sizes of real problems that can be executed. The results are encouraging.<>