PRAMs over integers do not compute maxflow efficiently Luc Pellissier, University Paris Est Creteil Thomas Seiller, CNRS
[email protected] [email protected] January 26, 2021 Abstract This paper presents a new semantic method for proving lower bounds in computational complexity. We use it to prove that maxflow, a Ptime complete problem, is not computable in polylogarithmic time on parallel random access machines (prams) working with integers, showing that NCZ 6= Ptime, where NCZ is the complexity class defined by such machines, and Ptime is the standard class of polynomial time computable problems (on, say, a Turing machine). On top of showing this new separation result, we show our method captures previous lower bounds results from the literature: Steele and Yao’s lower bounds for algebraic decision trees [30], Ben-Or’s lower bounds for algebraic computation trees [4], Cucker’s proof that NCR is not equal to PtimeR [10], and Mulmuley’s lower bounds for “prams without bit operations” [20]. arXiv:1811.06787v2 [cs.CC] 23 Jan 2021 1 Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Contents of the paper 5 3 Programs as Dynamical systems 9 4 Algebraic models of computations as amcs 12 5 Entropy and Cells 18 6 First lower bounds 21 7 Refining the method 23 8 Recovering Ben Or and Cucker’s theorems 26 9 Algebraic surfaces for an optimization problem 28 10 Improving Mulmuley’s result 32 2 1 Introduction 1.1 Computational Complexity The field of computational complexity was initiated soon after the conception of the first computers. While theoretical results had already established a definition of the notion of "computable function" on the set of natural numbers, it became quickly apparent that computable did not mean practical, as many functions considered computable could not be computed within a reasonable time.