Abstract
Recently a novel technique has been published to augment traditional Branch-and-Bound (B&B) while solving exactly a discrete optimization problem [Goldberg et al., 1997]. This technique is based on the negative thinking paradigm and has been applied to develop AURA, a Unate Covering Problem (UCP) solver which reportedly was able to deal efficiently with some time–consuming benchmark problems. However, on average AURA was not able to compete with SCHERZO, a classical UCP solver based on several new bounding techniques proposed by O. Coudert in his breakthrough paper [Coudert, 1996]. This fact left open the question on the practical impact of the negative thinking paradigm. The present work is meant to settle this question. The paper discusses the details of AURA II, a new implementation of the negative thinking paradigm for UCP which combines the best of SCHERZO and AURA. Experimental results show the dramatic impact of the negative thinking paradigm in searching the solution space and propose AURA II as the most efficient available tool for unate covering.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35498-9_57
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© 2000 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Carloni, L.P., Goldberg, E.I., Villa, T., Brayton, R.K., Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, A.L. (2000). AURA II: Combining Negative Thinking and Branch-and -Bound in Unate Covering Problems. In: Silveira, L.M., Devadas, S., Reis, R. (eds) VLSI: Systems on a Chip. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 34. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35498-9_31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35498-9_31
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