Efficient Data Structures For Decision Diagrams

Dynamic Programming Optimization (DPOP) is an algorithm proposed to solve distributed constraint optimization problems. In order to represent the multi-values functions manipulated in this algorithm, a data structure called Hypercube was implemented. A more efficient data structure, the Utility Diagram, was then proposed as an alternative to the Hypercube. DPOP also required the implementation of several operations (such as join, project, slice, split and reorder) on these two data structures. This project is a follow-up of Nacereddine Ouaret’s master thesis, which consisted in implementing all of these data structures and theirs associated operations. As DPOP may have to work on very large decision diagrams, and perform a lot of successive operations on them, having implementations which are efficient in term of speed and memory is critical. The aim of this project was therefore to seek for new ways to improve the already implemented functions for hypercubes and utility diagrams, both in term of execution time and memory consumption. This report will thus first present a quick overview of hypercubes, utility diagrams, and their associated operations (a more complete description of these objects, as well as the details about their original implementation, can be found in Nacereddine Ouaret’s report on Efficient Data Structures for Decision Diagrams). The second part will then cover various improvements made to their implementation during the course of this project. Finally, a variant for the methods used by hypercube, more economical in term of memory as it reuses existing hypercubes rather than creating new ones, will be presented.