Approaching the Chasm at Depth Four

• Published in: Journal of the ACM Vol. 61; no. 6; pp. 1 - 16
• Main Authors: Gupta, Ankit, Kamath, Pritish, Kayal, Neeraj, Saptharishi, Ramprasad
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Association for Computing Machinery 01.11.2014
• Subjects: Arithmetic; Circuits; Complexity; Complexity theory; Computation; Computer science; Determinants; Gates (circuits); Lower bounds; Mathematical analysis; Polynomials; Studies
• ISSN: 0004-5411; 1557-735X
• DOI: 10.1145/2629541

Agrawal and Vinay [2008], Koiran [2012], and Tavenas [2013] have recently shown that an exp (ω(√ n log n )) lower bound for depth four homogeneous circuits computing the permanent with bottom layer of × gates having fanin bounded by √n translates to a superpolynomial lower bound for general arithmetic circuits computing the permanent. Motivated by this, we examine the complexity of computing the permanent and determinant via such homogeneous depth four circuits with bounded bottom fanin. We show here that any homogeneous depth four arithmetic circuit with bottom fanin bounded by √n computing the permanent (or the determinant) must be of size exp,(Ω(√ n )).