Boosting Partial Symmetry Breaking by Local Search S. D. Prestwich1, B. Hnich2, H. Simonis1, R. Rossi3, S. A. Tarim4 1Cork Constraint Computation Centre 2Izmir University of Economics 3Wageningen UR 4Nottingham University Business School

introduction a surprising variety of SB methods have been reported we revisit a recent partial method: Symmetry Breaking by Nonstationary Optimisation (SBNO) [Prestwich, Hnich, Rossi, Tarim 2008] SBNO interleaves incomplete search in the symmetry group with backtrack search on the constraint problem

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advantages of SBNO • can handle very large groups (eg 2200)

• potential use of the entire symmetry group

• low memory requirement

• low computational overhead

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this paper

• a more accurate characterisation of SBNO (previously characterised as a form of SBDD)

• extended to arbitrary symmetries & constraint solvers

• reimplemented in a real constraint solver • combination with lex2 • new BIBD results: SBNO+lex2 is one of the most scalable known methods

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background many CSPs contain symmetries: bijections on decision variables that preserve solutions and non-solutions eg N-queens has 8 (each solution may be rotated through 90, 180 or 270 degrees, and reflected), BIBDs & others have many symmetry wastes search: we must explore symmetrically equivalent regions of the search space by eliminating the symmetry (symmetry breaking, SB) we may speed up the search significantly several distinct methods have been reported for SB in CSPs 4

SBNO is a recent approach to partial SB: we don’t insist that all symmetries are broken (sometimes more practical) it interleaves (i) local search (LS) or evolutionary search in the symmetry group with (ii) backtrack search on the CSP, to detect broken symmetry only limited time & memory are devoted to the LS

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previous work in SymCon08 we described an SBNO prototype, implemented in C with only trivial constraint handling it was competitive on all but the largest BIBD benchmarks from the literature new work we now believe that SBNO is most useful as a method for boosting other partial SB methods, eg lex2 we demonstrate this idea, formalise SBNO better, and present new results

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detecting violated lex-leaders we break symmetry by detecting violated generalised lex-leader constraints (GLLCs) suppose that we wish to solve a CSP using a standard constraint solver with DFS & CP, and the CSP has symmetry defined by a group G [Walsh 2006]: any form of symmetry can be broken by adding GLLCs X lex X g for all g ∈ G, where

• X is a total assignment on a fixed ordering of the CSP variables • X g is the image of X under g 7

• X g is admissible (a valid total assignment)

• lex is the standard lexicographical ordering relation

these constraints prune all solutions except the canonical (lex-least) ones but an exponential number of the constraints may be needed, so the method is impractical for problems with very large symmetry groups we now characterise SBNO in terms of GLLCs, & show that it’s valid for all forms of symmetry and all constraint solvers using [Walsh 2006] 8

the detection problem at a search tree node with partial assignment A, if we can find a group element g ∈ G such that Ag is admissible and Ag ≺lex A, then we can backtrack because A violates a GLLC lex-ordering is easily extended to partial assignments: if completely-assigned prefixes P, P ′ of Ag , A respectively have the property that P ≺lex P ′ then the constraint is violated eg 4-queens with usual 8 symmetries, including reflection about vertical axis (group element x) suppose we solve this using a matrix model: each square on the board corresponds to a binary variable, 1 denotes a queen and 0 no queen suppose we apply DFS and assign variables in a static row-by-row/column-by-column order 9

consider partial assignment A = (1, 0, 0, 0, ?, . . .) corresponding to board configuration • ? ? ?

? ? ?

? ? ?

? ? ?

then Ax is the partial assignment (0, 0, 0, 1, ?, . . .) corresponding to board configuration

? ? ?

? ? ?

? ? ?

• ? ? ?

but Ax ≺lex A whatever values are chosen for the unassigned variables, so A is symmetric to the lex-smaller node Ax and backtracking can safely occur from A 10

(it is also possible to reason on unassigned variables — eg (1, 0, x, 0, 0) ≺lex (1, 0, 1, y, 1) whatever the values of x & y — but in experiments we found this to be unnecessary) SBNO applies LS to the “auxiliary problem” of finding a g that causes GLLC violation this is justified by: proposition suppose we have a full set of unposted GLLCs under some fixed variable ordering; at a search tree node with partial assignment A, if we can find a g ∈ G such that Ag is admissible and Ag ≺lex A under the same variable ordering, then A violates a lex-leader constraint 11

conversely, all symmetries can (in principle) be detected by search on the symmetry group:

proposition if A violates a GLLC then there exists g ∈ G such that Ag is admissible and Ag ≺lex A these results don’t depend on the details of the constraint solver (value/variable ordering heuristics, filtering algorithms) or the type of symmetry but GLLC violation will be detected most often if the constraint solver uses the same fixed variable ordering that was used to define the GLLCs 12

detection as nonstationary optimisation we can model the detection problem as an optimisation problem with G as the search space, so that each g ∈ G is a search state objective function to be minimised: lex ranking of Ag on finding an element g with sufficiently small objective value we have solved the detection problem this opens up SB to a wide range of metaheuristic algorithms!

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a practical question: how much effort should we devote to detection at each DFS node? if an incomplete search algorithm fails to find an appropriate g, this might be because there is no such element — but it could also be because the algorithm has not searched hard enough too little search might miss important symmetries, while too much will slow down DFS our solution: expend limited effort at each search node to ensure reasonable computational overhead eg if we apply LS then we might apply one or a few local moves per search tree node, or only at some nodes 14

the objective function changes in time: as DFS changes variable assignments A, the objective value of any g changes because it depends on Ag this is called nonstationary optimisation in the optimisation literature, hence SBNO

note: even if detection fails at a node, it might succeed a few nodes later; DFS can then backtrack, possibly jumping many levels in the search tree eg consider 4-queens again suppose we did not manage to find group element x at search state A, but instead continued with DFS and only discovered x on reaching search state: •

?

• ?

? ?

• ? ?

now B x ≺lex B so we can backtrack from B 15

a heuristic: on successful detection we backtrack until it is no longer the case that Ag ≺lex A for current partial assignment A apart from some wasted DFS effort (during which we might find additional non-canonical solutions) the effect is the same as if we had detected the symmetry immediately so SBNO effectively continues to try to break symmetry at a node until DFS backtracks past that node

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this gives it an interesting property:

• a symmetry that would only save a small amount of DFS effort is unlikely to be detected, because DFS might backtrack past A before an appropriate g is discovered

• a symmetry that would save a great deal of DFS effort has a long time in which to be detected by local search

so SBNO should detect and break the “important” symmetries that make a significant difference to the total execution time this distinguishes it from other partial SB methods such as lex2 and STAB 17

detection by LS we now show how to use LS for detection, though any metaheuristic algorithm can be used we have a search space (G) and objective function (lex ranking of Ag ); LS also needs a neighbourhood structure defining possible local moves from each state to impose a neighbourhood structure on G we choose some subset H ⊂ G: from any search state g the possible local moves are the elements of H leading to neighbouring states g◦H

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so all G elements are local search states, and some (H) are also local moves to apply hill climbing, from each state g we try to find a local move h such that the objective function is reduced (Ag◦h ≺lex Ag ) if a series of moves (h1, h2, . . .) reduces the lex ranking sufficiently then we will find Ag◦h1◦h2◦... ≺lex A and can backtrack from A

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generators & LS there’s a relationship between LS & group generators a generator for a group is a subset H of the group G that can be used to generate all elements of G (denoted hHi = G) a local search space is connected if there exists a series of local moves from any state to any other state connectedness is an important property for LS because a disconnected space may prevent it from finding an optimal solution the search space induced by H is connected iff H is a generator set for G 20

so if a non-generator H is used then the LS can become trapped in a subspace that does not contain an appropriate g random moves from G\H can be used to counteract this, eg via random restarts: a wellknown technique for both LS and backtracking, but if H is not a generator then they are necessary not only for heuristic reasons but because the space is disconnected we first used a generator H (a natural approach which can yield neighbourhoods of manageable size, because any group G has a generator of size log2(|G|) or smaller), but got better results using a non-generator H, restoring connectedness by allowing occasional random moves 21

the LS algorithm we use the following simple LS algorithm initialise g to be any group element (we use the identity element) at each search tree node A call: procedure SBNO(g,A) if Ag ≺lex A backtrack to the first node B s.t. B g ≺lex B can’t be proved else if A is a local minimum g ← RANDOMISE(g) else g ← IMPROVE(g) SBNO(g,A) 22

this hill-climbs until either (i) finding a solution that enables backjumping, or (ii) reaching a local minimum (when it applies random moves) IMPROVE applies an improving local move to g, ie a move h s.t. Ag◦h ≺lex Ag the neighbourhood is explored in random order to find these moves if no such move exists then the state is a local minimum and we exit after calling RANDOMISE, which partly randomises g this method uses very little memory: it maintains just one dynamically changing group element g representing the current LS state, and adds no constraints to the constraint store 23

application to BIBDs we test SBNO on a problem with very large symmetry groups BIBDs are used to test several SB methods & a standard combinatorial problem a BIBD is a binary matrix with v rows, b columns, r ones per row, k ones per column, and scalar product λ between any pair of distinct rows specified by parameters (v, b, r, k, λ)

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eg 1 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 1 1

1 1 0 0 1 0

1 1 1 0 0 0

1 0 0 1 0 1

0 1 0 0 1 1

0 1 0 1 0 1

0 0 1 1 1 0

0 1 1 1 0 0

1 0 0 1 1 0

is a (6, 10, 5, 3, 2) instance challenging (many unsolved cases) and highly symmetrical: rows and columns can be permuted, so G = Sv × Sb with v! b! symmetries

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we use the most direct CSP model: each matrix element is a binary variable, and there are 3 types of constraint:

• v b-ary constraints for the r ones per row

• b v-ary constraints for the k ones per column

• v(v−1)/2 2b-ary constraints for the λ matching ones in each pair of rows

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heuristics for the SBNO local move neighbourhood we use the set of row or column swaps involving the matrix entry corresponding to the binary variable vf at which the last ≺lex test failed inspired by conflict-directed heuristics used in many LS algorithms focuses search effort on the source of failure a drawback: by using a non-generator of G we might fail to find an improving local move, but using random moves at local minima compensates RANDOMISE exchanges randomly chosen pairs of rows and columns, a random number of times (details in paper), making it PAC 27

experiments we implemented SBNO in ECLiPSe & added it to a BIBD program with lex2 (when combining SB methods care must be taken that not all solutions are excluded, but this combination is correct because lex2 constraints can be derived from the lex-least property of SBNO solutions) we use a standard set of BIBD instances from [Puget 2003], which contain most other problem sets we compare STAB, lex2, SBNO & lex2+SBNO in terms of #solutions

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lex2 + v b r k λ asym STAB lex2 SBNO SBNO 6 10 5 3 2 1 1 1 1,098 1 7 7 33 1 1 1 1 5,856 1 6 20 10 3 4 4 4 21 26,412 4 9 12 4 3 1 1 1 2 2,988 1 7 14 6 3 2 4 7 12 5,856 5 8 14 7 4 3 4 6 92 11,438 5 6 30 15 3 6 6 7 134 281,764 6 11 11 5 5 2 1 1 2 9,443 1 10 15 6 4 2 3 4 38 33,290 3 7 21 9 3 3 10 24 220 44,932 14 13 13 4 4 1 1 1 2 18,388 1 6 40 20 3 8 13 15 494 3,191,087 15 9 18 8 4 3 11 41 2,600 139,999 34 16 20 5 4 1 1 1 12 561,879 1 7 28 12 3 4 35 116 3,209 343,393 68 6 50 25 3 10 19 26 1,366 — 23 9 24 8 3 2 36 344 5,987 706,648 311 16 16 6 6 2 3 3 46 1,482,986 7 15 21 7 5 2 0 0 0 — 0 13 26 6 3 1 2 21 12,800 706,648 101 7 35 15 3 5 109 542 33,304 2,109,417 282 15 15 7 7 3 5 19 118 — 19 21 21 5 5 1 1 1 12 — 1 25 30 6 5 1 1 1 864 — 5 10 18 9 5 4 21 302 8,031 1,402,133 139 7 42 18 3 6 418 2,334 250,878 — 1,247 22 22 7 7 2 0 0 0 — 0 7 49 21 3 7 1,508 8,821 1,460,332 — 4,353 8 28 14 4 6 2,310 17,890 2,058,523 — 11,424 19 19 9 9 4 6 71 6,520 — 17 10 30 9 3 2 960 24,563 724,662 — 15,169 31 31 6 6 1 1 1 864 — 2 7 56 24 3 8 5,413 32,038 6,941,124 — 14,428 9 36 12 3 3 22,521 315,531 14,843,772 — 85,605 7 63 27 3 9 — 105,955 28,079,394 — 43,259 15 35 7 3 1 80 6,782 32,127,296 — 35,183 21 28 8 6 2 0 0 0 — 0 13 26 8 4 2 2461 83,337 3,664,243 — 31,323 11 22 10 5 4 4393 106,522 6,143,408 — 32,908 12 22 11 6 5 — 228,146 — — 76,572 25 25 9 9 3 — 17,016 — — 1,355 16 24 9 6 3 — 769,482 — — 76,860

SBNO alone is fairly weak: weaker than lex2 and our prototypes (not shown) in fact the new SBNO is weaker than the prototypes because it is designed for use with lex2, so it does not need to detect pure row or pure column symmetries but lex2+SBNO is stronger than either method alone, and also stronger than previous SBNO versions STAB [Puget 2003] is currently the leading partial SB method for BIBDs, breaking more symmetries than other partial methods and solving larger instances than complete methods lex2+SBNO breaks more symmetries than STAB in almost all cases, but we can’t compare runtimes yet: different platforms & ECLiPSe vs Solver 30

SBNO and GAPLex interesting to compare results with GAPLex [Kelsey, Jefferson, Petrie, Linton 2006] both are based on violated lex-leader detection SBNO uses LS for detection while GAPLex uses GAP GAPLex gave poor results on BIBDs, solving only the first two instances (but it performs well on other problems) presumably because GAPLex is a complete SB method, which can pay a high computational price (hence partial methods)

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runtime overhead profiling shows that only ≈ 1 3 of the total runtime is spent on SBNO processing, which is dwarfed by the improvement in total runtime a scatter plot compares runtimes of lex2 and lex2+SBNO 100000 10000

SBNO1 SBNO2

lex2+SBNO

1000 100 10 1 0.1 0.01 0.001 0.001

0.01

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1

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1e+06

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2 versions of SBNO: the version described above (“SBNO1”), and one that only calls SBNO at only half the DFS nodes, and performs 1 local move at each call (“SBNO2”) 32

as problem hardness increases, so does runtime advantage: up to a factor of 26 with SBNO1 and 40 with SBNO2 (but SBNO2 breaks fewer symmetries) this makes it considerably faster than current complete methods: the leading one for BIBDs is SBDD+STAB [Puget 2005] but the lex2 results in the same paper are often faster, and lex2+SBNO is much faster than lex2

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so SBNO greatly boosts the power of lex2 so much so that lex2+SBNO is one of the most scalable symmetry breaking methods for BIBDs surprising that such a weak method becomes so strong when combined with lex2? but this shows that the two partial methods are complementary: lex2 efficiently breaks pure row and column symmetries, while SBNO can potentially break any symmetry though it misses many

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illustration we examined the effect of SBNO on an allsolution search tree for instance (8,14,7,4,3) using lex2 alone: 1 0

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74 1

1

79 1

74

0

0

0

78 1

72

0

78

0

54 1

58

1

1

1

50 1

51

0

0

0

0

51 1

47 1

50 1

50 1

0

66 1

1

74

0

92

0

72 1

1

68

1

76

0

1

64 1

72

66

75 0

0

0

0

50

64

68 1

72

1

62

0

65

0

1

54

0

64

1

48 1

48 1

52 1

0

47

0

47

59

1

47 1

1

58

1

46

0

0

0

46

0

46 1

50 0

1

45 1

43

0

1

94 1

0

1

88 1

0

1

89 1

0

1

35

and using lex2+SBNO: 1 0

1

2 0

1

3 0

1

4 0

1

5 0

1

6 0

1

7 0

1

15 0

1

16 0

1

17 0

1

22 0

1

23 0

1

24 0

1

25 0

1

29 0

1

30 0

1

32 0

31 1

0

33 0

1

32 1

0

1

36 0

36 1

0

37 0

1

43 1

0

1

40 0

44 1

0

41 0

1

0

1

0

1

0

0

51 1

0

0

0

1

0

64 0

1

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

1

68 0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

1

0

61 1

0

1

0

0

1

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

1

1

65 1

0

1

65 1

0

68

0

78

1

65 1

0

64 1

65

0

1

66

1

64 1

65

0

64

0

64

65 1

1

61 1

64

1

68 1

0

1

68 1

0

79

1

73 1

0

80

1

74

0

1

88

0

88 1

0

89 0

60 1

0

76

0

1

1

1

62

75

0

0

0

78

0

1

0

78 1

0

92 0

1

76 1

90 1

1

75 1

89 1

90

1

0

59

0

0

1

1

1

0

1

0

0

0

58

74

0

1

0

0

0

1

51 1

52 1

0

1

1

61

0

0

1

0

1

0

0

51 1

55

72

92

1

0

68

0

0

51

60

0

1

1

50

54

1

61 1

50 50

1

0

54

60 1

0

0

0

1

0

65

0

51

59 1

66 0

1

1

1

0

0

64 1

0

0

0

0

52

64 1

1

51

51 1

58

0

62 1

1

54

1

47 50

1

50

0

54

61 1

65

0

50 1

60

0

48 1

48

52 1

47

1

47

0

1

47 1

59

1

47

0

0

0

46

0

50

60

1

46 46

58

46

0

43

0

1

45

78 1

79 1

0

1

87 0

79 0

80 1

0

88 0

89 0

1

0

1

0

0

0

1

1

0

89 1

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

79 1

0

80 1

0

1

80 1

0

1

87 1

0

1

93 1

87 1

82

82 1

88 89

0

80 88

1

87

0

79

87 82

1

1

79 1

1

79

0

0

1

94 1

0

1

88 1

0

1

89 1

0

1

(triangles show where SBNO causes backtracking) 36

there are 2 main branches after an initial fixed assignment on the left SBNO dramatically reduces the size of the tree, by cutting off large subtrees containing most of the removed solutions on the right only a few nodes are removed, most of which are solutions notice some “chains” of failure, in which a useful symmetry group element discovered at a lower level in the tree immediately prunes higher nodes

37

related work: adding constraints adding constraints to the CSP [Puget 1993] is popular and can break all symmetries developed into the lex-leader method for Boolean variables & variable symmetries [Crawford, Ginsberg, Luks, Roy 1996] extended to non-Boolean variables and independent variable & value symmetries [Petrie, Smith 2003; Puget 2006] extended to arbitrary symmetries [Wal 2006] in practice too many constraints might be needed, but CGT systems can be used to detect (unposted) constraints, eg GAPLex 38

partial SB adding a subset of the SB constraints can give very good results: • lex 2 [Flener, Frisch, Hnich, Kiziltan, Miguel, Pearson, Walsh 2002] for matrix models with row and column symmetry simple, tractable and quite powerful • Symmetry Breaking Using Stabilizers (STAB) [Puget 2003] only adds constraints that do not affect the current partial variable assignment other techniques reduce arity & number of constraints more powerful, handling up to 1091 symmetries 39

SBDS Symmetry Breaking During Search [Backofen, Will 1999; Gent, Smith 2000] a complete method that adds constraints during search s.t., after backtracking from a decision, future symmetrically equivalent decisions are disallowed has been implemented with CGT [Gent, Harvey, Kelsey 2002], allowing symmetries to be specified more compactly via group generators may still add too many constraints but can handle billions of symmetries

40

SBDD Symmetry Breaking by Dominance Detection [Fahle, Schamberger, Sellmann 2001; Focacci, Milano 2001; Brown, Finkelstein, Purdom 1988] a complete method that does not add constraints before or during search, so it does not suffer from the space problem of some methods detects when the current search state is symmetrical to a previously-explored “dominating” state respects search heuristics (many do not, including SBNO) also combined with CGT [Gent, Harvey, Kelsey 2002] dominance testing can be solved as a CSP [Puget 2005] 41

GAPLex SBNO is most closely related to GAPLex both backtrack away from non-canonical solutions by detecting unposted lex-leader constraints that are violated but GAPLex uses CGT for detection and is complete, while SBNO uses resource-bounded LS and is incomplete GAPLex turns out to be unsuited for breaking symmetry in BIBDs, showing the advantage of using incomplete optimisation algorithms for partial SB GAPLex has been defined only for variable symmetries, though it could be extended to arbitrary symmetries by using GLLCs 42

hybrid search often a trade-off in tree search between (i) expensive reasoning at each node to potentially eliminate large subtrees, (ii) processing nodes cheaply to reduce overheads partial reasoning can be used to hopefully find something useful in a short time eg [Sellmann, Harvey 2002] use LS within backtrack search to generate tight redundant constraints (heuristic propagation) SBNO is another example of this type of integration, but its nonstationary approach allows it to continue reasoning about a node long after leaving it behind 43

conclusion other methods have used CP or CGT to solve auxiliary problems arising in SB, but SBNO is the first use of metaheuristics for this purpose new connection between SB & metaheuristics should be fruitful for CP SBNO’s small time & memory overheads make it ideal for handling very large symmetry groups on BIBDs, SBNO+lex2 broke more symmetries than 2 other partial SB methods (lex2 and STAB) and was faster than complete methods

44

future work other metaheuristics & applications, especially with value symmetry & conditional symmetry (using results of [Walsh 2006]) could combine SBNO with other partial SB methods: it can potentially boost the performance of any partial symmetry breaking method, as it may discover any violated GLLC combining two good techniques does not always yield further improvement but STAB and SBNO are quite orthogonal: • STAB breaks symmetry among the unlabelled variables to increase propagation • SBNO breaks symmetry among the labelled variables, cf intelligent backtracking 45

Boosting Partial Symmetry Breaking by Local Search

4. Nottingham University Business School .... objective function to be minimised: lex ranking of A g on finding ... ranking sufficiently then we will find A g◦h1◦h2◦.

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