Lower bounds for algebraic machines, semantically
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 ≠ 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, Ben-Or's lower bounds for algebraic computation trees, Cucker's proof that NC is not equal to PTIME on the reals, and Mulmuley's lower bounds for "PRAMs without bit operations".