On the parallelization of SAT solvers

Abstract

This paper presents the main challenges, the hot topics, and the intriguing issues in the area of parallel SAT solving which provides possible directions for future research. It gives a detailed summary for the main features and technologies used in the most widely known and successful parallel SAT solvers and shows the strong points and the shortcomings in them. In addition, it compares between the basic characteristics for these solvers including algorithms, architecture paradigm, scalability, network communication, managing the workload distribution and more. Finally, a new approach is proposed that is expected to be a very promising direction as it copes with the nature of parallel paradigm and results in almost a linear speedup in solving SAT instances, independent of the number of variables of the SAT formula.