The conjunctive complexity of quadratic Boolean functions

AbstractThe minimal number, of conjuctions in monotone circuits for quadratic Boolean functions, i.e. disjunctions of quadratic monomials xixj, is investigated. Single level circuits which have only one level of conjuctions are compared with arbitrary monotone circuits. The computation of the single level complexity is shown to be NP complete. For almost all quadratic functions, almost optimal circuits can be computed in polynomial time. The single level conjecture is disproved, i.e. a quadratic function is defined whose single level complexity is larger than its conjuctive complexit

The multiplicative complexity of interval checking

We determine the exact AND-gate cost of checking if $a\leq x < b$, where $a$ and $b$ are constant integers. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that the cost of interval checking never exceeds that of a single comparison and, in some cases, it is even lower

The Multiplicative Complexity of Boolean Functions on Four and Five Variables

A generic way to design lightweight cryptographic primitives is to construct simple rounds using small nonlinear components such as 4x4 S-boxes and use these iteratively (e.g., PRESENT and SPONGENT). In order to efficiently implement the primitive, efficient implementations of its internal components are needed. Multiplicative complexity of a function is the minimum number of AND gates required to implement it by a circuit over the basis (AND, XOR, NOT). It is known that multiplicative complexity is exponential in the number of input bits n. Thus it came as a surprise that circuits for all 65 536 functions on four bits were found which used at most three AND gates. In this paper, we verify this result and extend it to five-variable Boolean functions. We show that the multiplicative complexity of a Boolean function with five variables is at most four