REFINED MARK(S)-SET-BASED BACKTRACK LITERAL SELECTION FOR AND PARALLELISM IN LOGIC PROGRAMS

Recently Conery proposed a backward execution algorithm for AND-parallel execution of logic programs, and Ng and Leung extended it. They adopt the same data structure called mark(s) set to store information about failure history during AND-parallel evaluation of clauses. Both of the two algorithms essentially have the same rationale with minor differences and have been considered correct, largely due to their intuitive persuasiveness. We closely re-examine those algorithms and find out that they are incorrect. Their incorrectness comes from oversimplification of failure situations. Our analyses focused on the mark(s)-set-based backtrack literal selection are presented. We also propose another backtrack literal selection method based on the mark(s) set, and prove its correctness.