19,222 research outputs found
The Reachability Problem for Petri Nets is Not Elementary
Petri nets, also known as vector addition systems, are a long established
model of concurrency with extensive applications in modelling and analysis of
hardware, software and database systems, as well as chemical, biological and
business processes. The central algorithmic problem for Petri nets is
reachability: whether from the given initial configuration there exists a
sequence of valid execution steps that reaches the given final configuration.
The complexity of the problem has remained unsettled since the 1960s, and it is
one of the most prominent open questions in the theory of verification.
Decidability was proved by Mayr in his seminal STOC 1981 work, and the
currently best published upper bound is non-primitive recursive Ackermannian of
Leroux and Schmitz from LICS 2019. We establish a non-elementary lower bound,
i.e. that the reachability problem needs a tower of exponentials of time and
space. Until this work, the best lower bound has been exponential space, due to
Lipton in 1976. The new lower bound is a major breakthrough for several
reasons. Firstly, it shows that the reachability problem is much harder than
the coverability (i.e., state reachability) problem, which is also ubiquitous
but has been known to be complete for exponential space since the late 1970s.
Secondly, it implies that a plethora of problems from formal languages, logic,
concurrent systems, process calculi and other areas, that are known to admit
reductions from the Petri nets reachability problem, are also not elementary.
Thirdly, it makes obsolete the currently best lower bounds for the reachability
problems for two key extensions of Petri nets: with branching and with a
pushdown stack.Comment: Final version of STOC'1
Bounded Counter Languages
We show that deterministic finite automata equipped with two-way heads
are equivalent to deterministic machines with a single two-way input head and
linearly bounded counters if the accepted language is strictly bounded,
i.e., a subset of for a fixed sequence of symbols . Then we investigate linear speed-up for counter machines. Lower
and upper time bounds for concrete recognition problems are shown, implying
that in general linear speed-up does not hold for counter machines. For bounded
languages we develop a technique for speeding up computations by any constant
factor at the expense of adding a fixed number of counters
Self-Replication and Self-Assembly for Manufacturing
It has been argued that a central objective of nanotechnology is to make
products inexpensively, and that self-replication is an effective approach
to very low-cost manufacturing. The research presented here is intended to
be a step towards this vision. We describe a computational simulation of
nanoscale machines floating in a virtual liquid. The machines can bond
together to form strands (chains) that self-replicate and self-assemble
into user-specified meshes. There are four types of machines and the
sequence of machine types in a strand determines the shape of the mesh
they will build. A strand may be in an unfolded state, in which the bonds
are straight, or in a folded state, in which the bond angles depend on the
types of machines. By choosing the sequence of machine types in a strand,
the user can specify a variety of polygonal shapes. A simulation typically
begins with an initial unfolded seed strand in a soup of unbonded machines.
The seed strand replicates by bonding with free machines in the soup. The
child strands fold into the encoded polygonal shape, and then the polygons
drift together and bond to form a mesh. We demonstrate that a variety of
polygonal meshes can be manufactured in the simulation, by simply changing
the sequence of machine types in the seed
Counter Machines and Distributed Automata: A Story about Exchanging Space and Time
We prove the equivalence of two classes of counter machines and one class of
distributed automata. Our counter machines operate on finite words, which they
read from left to right while incrementing or decrementing a fixed number of
counters. The two classes differ in the extra features they offer: one allows
to copy counter values, whereas the other allows to compute copyless sums of
counters. Our distributed automata, on the other hand, operate on directed path
graphs that represent words. All nodes of a path synchronously execute the same
finite-state machine, whose state diagram must be acyclic except for
self-loops, and each node receives as input the state of its direct
predecessor. These devices form a subclass of linear-time one-way cellular
automata.Comment: 15 pages (+ 13 pages of appendices), 5 figures; To appear in the
proceedings of AUTOMATA 2018
Self-Replicating Strands that Self-Assemble into User-Specified Meshes
It has been argued that a central objective of nanotechnology is to make
products inexpensively, and that self-replication is an effective approach to
very low-cost manufacturing. The research presented here is intended to be a
step towards this vision. In previous work (JohnnyVon 1.0), we simulated
machines that bonded together to form self-replicating strands. There were two
types of machines (called types 0 and 1), which enabled strands to encode
arbitrary bit strings. However, the information encoded in the strands had no
functional role in the simulation. The information was replicated without being
interpreted, which was a significant limitation for potential manufacturing
applications. In the current work (JohnnyVon 2.0), the information in a strand
is interpreted as instructions for assembling a polygonal mesh. There are now
four types of machines and the information encoded in a strand determines how
it folds. A strand may be in an unfolded state, in which the bonds are straight
(although they flex slightly due to virtual forces acting on the machines), or
in a folded state, in which the bond angles depend on the types of machines. By
choosing the sequence of machine types in a strand, the user can specify a
variety of polygonal shapes. A simulation typically begins with an initial
unfolded seed strand in a soup of unbonded machines. The seed strand replicates
by bonding with free machines in the soup. The child strands fold into the
encoded polygonal shape, and then the polygons drift together and bond to form
a mesh. We demonstrate that a variety of polygonal meshes can be manufactured
in the simulation, by simply changing the sequence of machine types in the
seed
Power of Quantum Computation with Few Clean Qubits
This paper investigates the power of polynomial-time quantum computation in
which only a very limited number of qubits are initially clean in the |0>
state, and all the remaining qubits are initially in the totally mixed state.
No initializations of qubits are allowed during the computation, nor
intermediate measurements. The main results of this paper are unexpectedly
strong error-reducible properties of such quantum computations. It is proved
that any problem solvable by a polynomial-time quantum computation with
one-sided bounded error that uses logarithmically many clean qubits can also be
solvable with exponentially small one-sided error using just two clean qubits,
and with polynomially small one-sided error using just one clean qubit. It is
further proved in the case of two-sided bounded error that any problem solvable
by such a computation with a constant gap between completeness and soundness
using logarithmically many clean qubits can also be solvable with exponentially
small two-sided error using just two clean qubits. If only one clean qubit is
available, the problem is again still solvable with exponentially small error
in one of the completeness and soundness and polynomially small error in the
other. As an immediate consequence of the above result for the two-sided-error
case, it follows that the TRACE ESTIMATION problem defined with fixed constant
threshold parameters is complete for the classes of problems solvable by
polynomial-time quantum computations with completeness 2/3 and soundness 1/3
using logarithmically many clean qubits and just one clean qubit. The
techniques used for proving the error-reduction results may be of independent
interest in themselves, and one of the technical tools can also be used to show
the hardness of weak classical simulations of one-clean-qubit computations
(i.e., DQC1 computations).Comment: 44 pages + cover page; the results in Section 8 are overlapping with
the main results in arXiv:1409.677
Quantum computation with devices whose contents are never read
In classical computation, a "write-only memory" (WOM) is little more than an
oxymoron, and the addition of WOM to a (deterministic or probabilistic)
classical computer brings no advantage. We prove that quantum computers that
are augmented with WOM can solve problems that neither a classical computer
with WOM nor a quantum computer without WOM can solve, when all other resource
bounds are equal. We focus on realtime quantum finite automata, and examine the
increase in their power effected by the addition of WOMs with different access
modes and capacities. Some problems that are unsolvable by two-way
probabilistic Turing machines using sublogarithmic amounts of read/write memory
are shown to be solvable by these enhanced automata.Comment: 32 pages, a preliminary version of this work was presented in the 9th
International Conference on Unconventional Computation (UC2010
Quantum Branching Programs and Space-Bounded Nonuniform Quantum Complexity
In this paper, the space complexity of nonuniform quantum computations is
investigated. The model chosen for this are quantum branching programs, which
provide a graphic description of sequential quantum algorithms. In the first
part of the paper, simulations between quantum branching programs and
nonuniform quantum Turing machines are presented which allow to transfer lower
and upper bound results between the two models. In the second part of the
paper, different variants of quantum OBDDs are compared with their
deterministic and randomized counterparts. In the third part, quantum branching
programs are considered where the performed unitary operation may depend on the
result of a previous measurement. For this model a simulation of randomized
OBDDs and exponential lower bounds are presented.Comment: 45 pages, 3 Postscript figures. Proofs rearranged, typos correcte
The Computational Power of Beeps
In this paper, we study the quantity of computational resources (state
machine states and/or probabilistic transition precision) needed to solve
specific problems in a single hop network where nodes communicate using only
beeps. We begin by focusing on randomized leader election. We prove a lower
bound on the states required to solve this problem with a given error bound,
probability precision, and (when relevant) network size lower bound. We then
show the bound tight with a matching upper bound. Noting that our optimal upper
bound is slow, we describe two faster algorithms that trade some state
optimality to gain efficiency. We then turn our attention to more general
classes of problems by proving that once you have enough states to solve leader
election with a given error bound, you have (within constant factors) enough
states to simulate correctly, with this same error bound, a logspace TM with a
constant number of unary input tapes: allowing you to solve a large and
expressive set of problems. These results identify a key simplicity threshold
beyond which useful distributed computation is possible in the beeping model.Comment: Extended abstract to appear in the Proceedings of the International
Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2015
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