Journal of Automated Reasoning 18: 139–162, 1997. 139 c  1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. The Design of the CADE-13 ATP System Competition CHRISTIAN SUTTNER Institut f¨ ur Informatik, TU M¨ unchen, M¨ unchen, Germany. e-mail: suttner@informatik.tu-muenchen.de GEOFF SUTCLIFFE Department of Computer Science, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. e-mail: geoff@cs.jcu.edu.au Abstract. Running a competition for automated theorem proving (ATP) systems is a difficult and arguable venture. However, the potential benefits of such an event by far outweigh the controversial aspects. The motivations for running the CADE-13 ATP System Competition were to contribute to the evaluation of ATP systems, to stimulate ATP research and system development, and to expose ATP systems to researchers both within and outside the ATP community. This article identifies and discusses the issues that determine the nature of such a competition. Choices and motivated decisions for the CADE-13 competition, with respect to the issues, are given. Key words: automated theorem proving, competition, design. 1. Introduction Running a competition for automated theorem proving (ATP) systems 1 is a dif- ficult and arguable venture. The reasons for this are that existing ATP systems require different amounts of user interaction, are designed for different types of reasoning, are based on different logics, have different input formats, and may run on specialized hardware. Moreover, there is no clear work profile with respect to which ATP systems should be evaluated. However, a competition can contribute to the following important needs: • evaluate the relative capabilities of ATP systems, • stimulate ATP research in general, • stimulate ATP research towards autonomous systems, • provide motivation for implementing and fixing systems, • provide an inspiring environment for personal interaction between ATP re- searchers, and • expose ATP systems to researchers both within and outside the ATP com- munity. In other disciplines competitions are regularly used to stimulate research and development. The annual ACM computer chess championship [16] is very well VTEX(EL) PIPS No.:133451 MATHKAP JARS1821.tex; 11/04/1997; 16:50; v.7; p.1