57,151 research outputs found
Circuit Depth Reductions
The best known size lower bounds against unrestricted circuits have remained
around for several decades. Moreover, the only known technique for proving
lower bounds in this model, gate elimination, is inherently limited to proving
lower bounds of less than . In this work, we propose a non-gate-elimination
approach for obtaining circuit lower bounds, via certain depth-three lower
bounds. We prove that every (unbounded-depth) circuit of size can be
expressed as an OR of -CNFs. For DeMorgan formulas, the best
known size lower bounds have been stuck at around for decades.
Under a plausible hypothesis about probabilistic polynomials, we show that
-size DeMorgan formulas have
-size depth-3 circuits which are approximate
sums of -degree polynomials over .
While these structural results do not immediately lead to new lower bounds,
they do suggest new avenues of attack on these longstanding lower bound
problems.
Our results complement the classical depth- reduction results of Valiant,
which show that logarithmic-depth circuits of linear size can be computed by an
OR of -CNFs, and slightly stronger results for
series-parallel circuits. It is known that no purely graph-theoretic reduction
could yield interesting depth-3 circuits from circuits of super-logarithmic
depth. We overcome this limitation (for small-size circuits) by taking into
account both the graph-theoretic and functional properties of circuits and
formulas.
We show that improvements of the following pseudorandom constructions imply
new circuit lower bounds: dispersers for varieties, correlation with constant
degree polynomials, matrix rigidity, and hardness for depth- circuits with
constant bottom fan-in
Lifting for Constant-Depth Circuits and Applications to MCSP
Lifting arguments show that the complexity of a function in one model is essentially that of a related function (often the composition of the original function with a small function called a gadget) in a more powerful model. Lifting has been used to prove strong lower bounds in communication complexity, proof complexity, circuit complexity and many other areas.
We present a lifting construction for constant depth unbounded fan-in circuits. Given a function f, we construct a function g, so that the depth d+1 circuit complexity of g, with a certain restriction on bottom fan-in, is controlled by the depth d circuit complexity of f, with the same restriction. The function g is defined as f composed with a parity function. With some quantitative losses, average-case and general depth-d circuit complexity can be reduced to circuit complexity with this bottom fan-in restriction. As a consequence, an algorithm to approximate the depth d (for any d > 3) circuit complexity of given (truth tables of) Boolean functions yields an algorithm for approximating the depth 3 circuit complexity of functions, i.e., there are quasi-polynomial time mapping reductions between various gap-versions of AC?-MCSP. Our lifting results rely on a blockwise switching lemma that may be of independent interest.
We also show some barriers on improving the efficiency of our reductions: such improvements would yield either surprisingly efficient algorithms for MCSP or stronger than known AC? circuit lower bounds
Approaching MCSP from Above and Below: Hardness for a Conditional Variant and AC^0[p]
The Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) asks whether a given Boolean function has a circuit of at most a given size. MCSP has been studied for over a half-century and has deep connections throughout theoretical computer science including to cryptography, computational learning theory, and proof complexity. For example, we know (informally) that if MCSP is easy to compute, then most cryptography can be broken. Despite this cryptographic hardness connection and extensive research, we still know relatively little about the hardness of MCSP unconditionally. Indeed, until very recently it was unknown whether MCSP can be computed in AC^0[2] (Golovnev et al., ICALP 2019).
Our main contribution in this paper is to formulate a new "oracle" variant of circuit complexity and prove that this problem is NP-complete under randomized reductions. In more detail, we define the Minimum Oracle Circuit Size Problem (MOCSP) that takes as input the truth table of a Boolean function f, a size threshold s, and the truth table of an oracle Boolean function O, and determines whether there is a circuit with O-oracle gates and at most s wires that computes f. We prove that MOCSP is NP-complete under randomized polynomial-time reductions.
We also extend the recent AC^0[p] lower bound against MCSP by Golovnev et al. to a lower bound against the circuit minimization problem for depth-d formulas, (AC^0_d)-MCSP. We view this result as primarily a technical contribution. In particular, our proof takes a radically different approach from prior MCSP-related hardness results
On the power of homogeneous depth 4 arithmetic circuits
We prove exponential lower bounds on the size of homogeneous depth 4
arithmetic circuits computing an explicit polynomial in . Our results hold
for the {\it Iterated Matrix Multiplication} polynomial - in particular we show
that any homogeneous depth 4 circuit computing the entry in the product
of generic matrices of dimension must have size
.
Our results strengthen previous works in two significant ways.
Our lower bounds hold for a polynomial in . Prior to our work, Kayal et
al [KLSS14] proved an exponential lower bound for homogeneous depth 4 circuits
(over fields of characteristic zero) computing a poly in . The best known
lower bounds for a depth 4 homogeneous circuit computing a poly in was the
bound of by [LSS, KLSS14].Our exponential lower bounds
also give the first exponential separation between general arithmetic circuits
and homogeneous depth 4 arithmetic circuits. In particular they imply that the
depth reduction results of Koiran [Koi12] and Tavenas [Tav13] are tight even
for reductions to general homogeneous depth 4 circuits (without the restriction
of bounded bottom fanin).
Our lower bound holds over all fields. The lower bound of [KLSS14] worked
only over fields of characteristic zero. Prior to our work, the best lower
bound for homogeneous depth 4 circuits over fields of positive characteristic
was [LSS, KLSS14]
Non-Malleable Codes for Small-Depth Circuits
We construct efficient, unconditional non-malleable codes that are secure
against tampering functions computed by small-depth circuits. For
constant-depth circuits of polynomial size (i.e. tampering
functions), our codes have codeword length for a -bit
message. This is an exponential improvement of the previous best construction
due to Chattopadhyay and Li (STOC 2017), which had codeword length
. Our construction remains efficient for circuit depths as
large as (indeed, our codeword length remains
, and extending our result beyond this would require
separating from .
We obtain our codes via a new efficient non-malleable reduction from
small-depth tampering to split-state tampering. A novel aspect of our work is
the incorporation of techniques from unconditional derandomization into the
framework of non-malleable reductions. In particular, a key ingredient in our
analysis is a recent pseudorandom switching lemma of Trevisan and Xue (CCC
2013), a derandomization of the influential switching lemma from circuit
complexity; the randomness-efficiency of this switching lemma translates into
the rate-efficiency of our codes via our non-malleable reduction.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure
Verifying proofs in constant depth
In this paper we initiate the study of proof systems where verification of proofs proceeds by NC circuits. We investigate the question which languages admit proof systems in this very restricted model. Formulated alternatively, we ask which languages can be enumerated by NC functions. Our results show that the answer to this problem is not determined by the complexity of the language. On the one hand, we construct NC proof systems for a variety of languages ranging from regular to NP-complete. On the other hand, we show by combinatorial methods that even easy regular languages such as Exact-OR do not admit NC proof systems. We also present a general construction of proof systems for regular languages with strongly connected NFA's
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