A branching program is a well-studied model of computation and a representation for Boolean functions. It is a directed acyclic graph with a unique root node, some accepting nodes, and some rejecting nodes. Except for the accepting and rejecting nodes, each node has a label with a variable and each outgoing edge of the node has a label with a 0/1 assignment of the variable. The satisfiability problem for branching programs is, given a branching program with n variables and m nodes, to determine if there exists some assignment that activates a consistent path from the root to an accepting node. The width of a branching program is the maximum number of nodes at any level. The satisfiability problem for width-2 branching programs is known to be NP-complete. In this paper, we present a satisfiability algorithm for width-2 branching programs with n variables and cn nodes, and show that its running time is poly(n)·2(1-µ(c))n, where µ(c)=1/2O(c log c). Our algorithm consists of two phases. First, we transform a given width-2 branching program to a set of some structured formulas that consist of AND and Exclusive-OR gates. Then, we check the satisfiability of these formulas by a greedy restriction method depending on the frequency of the occurrence of variables.

We propose efficient algorithms for Sorting k-Sets in Bins. The Sorting k-Sets in Bins problem can be described as follows. We are given numbered n bins with k balls in each bin. Balls in the i-th bin are numbered n-i+1. We can only swap balls between adjacent bins. Our task is to move all of the balls to the same numbered bins. For this problem, we give an efficient greedy algorithm with $rac{k+1}{4}n^2+O(k+n)$ swaps and provide a detailed analysis for k=3. In addition, we give a more efficient recursive algorithm using $rac{15}{16}n^2+O(n)$ swaps for k=3.

We present constant-time testing algorithms for generalized shogi (Japanese chess), chess, and xiangqi (Chinese chess). These problems are known or believed to be EXPTIME-complete. A testing algorithm (or a tester) for a property accepts an input if it has the property, and rejects it with high probability if it is far from having the property (e.g., at least 2/3) by reading only a constant part of the input. A property is said to be testable if a tester exists. Given any position on a ⌊√n⌋×⌊√n⌋ board with O(n) pieces, the generalized shogi, chess, and xiangqi problem are problems determining the property that “the player who moves first has a winning strategy.” We propose that this property is testable for shogi, chess, and xiangqi. The shogi tester and xiangqi tester have a one-sided-error, but surprisingly, the chess tester has no-error. Over the last decade, many problems have been revealed to be testable, but most of such problems belong to NP. This is the first result on the constant-time testability of EXPTIME-complete problems.