English

SDDs are Exponentially More Succinct than OBDDs

Logic in Computer Science 2016-01-05 v1

Abstract

Introduced by Darwiche (2011), sentential decision diagrams (SDDs) are essentially as tractable as ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDDs), but tend to be more succinct in practice. This makes SDDs a prominent representation language, with many applications in artificial intelligence and knowledge compilation. We prove that SDDs are more succinct than OBDDs also in theory, by constructing a family of boolean functions where each member has polynomial SDD size but exponential OBDD size. This exponential separation improves a quasipolynomial separation recently established by Razgon (2013), and settles an open problem in knowledge compilation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.00501,
  title  = {SDDs are Exponentially More Succinct than OBDDs},
  author = {Simone Bova},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.00501},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:22:28.858Z