3,365 research outputs found
Towards a complexity theory for the congested clique
The congested clique model of distributed computing has been receiving
attention as a model for densely connected distributed systems. While there has
been significant progress on the side of upper bounds, we have very little in
terms of lower bounds for the congested clique; indeed, it is now know that
proving explicit congested clique lower bounds is as difficult as proving
circuit lower bounds.
In this work, we use various more traditional complexity-theoretic tools to
build a clearer picture of the complexity landscape of the congested clique:
-- Nondeterminism and beyond: We introduce the nondeterministic congested
clique model (analogous to NP) and show that there is a natural canonical
problem family that captures all problems solvable in constant time with
nondeterministic algorithms. We further generalise these notions by introducing
the constant-round decision hierarchy (analogous to the polynomial hierarchy).
-- Non-constructive lower bounds: We lift the prior non-uniform counting
arguments to a general technique for proving non-constructive uniform lower
bounds for the congested clique. In particular, we prove a time hierarchy
theorem for the congested clique, showing that there are decision problems of
essentially all complexities, both in the deterministic and nondeterministic
settings.
-- Fine-grained complexity: We map out relationships between various natural
problems in the congested clique model, arguing that a reduction-based
complexity theory currently gives us a fairly good picture of the complexity
landscape of the congested clique
Alternation-Trading Proofs, Linear Programming, and Lower Bounds
A fertile area of recent research has demonstrated concrete polynomial time
lower bounds for solving natural hard problems on restricted computational
models. Among these problems are Satisfiability, Vertex Cover, Hamilton Path,
Mod6-SAT, Majority-of-Majority-SAT, and Tautologies, to name a few. The proofs
of these lower bounds follow a certain proof-by-contradiction strategy that we
call alternation-trading. An important open problem is to determine how
powerful such proofs can possibly be.
We propose a methodology for studying these proofs that makes them amenable
to both formal analysis and automated theorem proving. We prove that the search
for better lower bounds can often be turned into a problem of solving a large
series of linear programming instances. Implementing a small-scale theorem
prover based on this result, we extract new human-readable time lower bounds
for several problems. This framework can also be used to prove concrete
limitations on the current techniques.Comment: To appear in STACS 2010, 12 page
Nondeterministic quantum communication complexity: the cyclic equality game and iterated matrix multiplication
We study nondeterministic multiparty quantum communication with a quantum
generalization of broadcasts. We show that, with number-in-hand classical
inputs, the communication complexity of a Boolean function in this
communication model equals the logarithm of the support rank of the
corresponding tensor, whereas the approximation complexity in this model equals
the logarithm of the border support rank. This characterisation allows us to
prove a log-rank conjecture posed by Villagra et al. for nondeterministic
multiparty quantum communication with message-passing.
The support rank characterization of the communication model connects quantum
communication complexity intimately to the theory of asymptotic entanglement
transformation and algebraic complexity theory. In this context, we introduce
the graphwise equality problem. For a cycle graph, the complexity of this
communication problem is closely related to the complexity of the computational
problem of multiplying matrices, or more precisely, it equals the logarithm of
the asymptotic support rank of the iterated matrix multiplication tensor. We
employ Strassen's laser method to show that asymptotically there exist
nontrivial protocols for every odd-player cyclic equality problem. We exhibit
an efficient protocol for the 5-player problem for small inputs, and we show
how Young flattenings yield nontrivial complexity lower bounds
A Casual Tour Around a Circuit Complexity Bound
I will discuss the recent proof that the complexity class NEXP
(nondeterministic exponential time) lacks nonuniform ACC circuits of polynomial
size. The proof will be described from the perspective of someone trying to
discover it.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures. An earlier version appeared in SIGACT News,
September 201
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