Computation at a distance

Abstract

We consider a model of computation motivated by possible limitations on quantum computers. We have a linear array of n wires, and we may perform operations only on pairs of adjacent wires. Our goal is to build a circuits that perform specified operations spanning all n wires. We show that the natural lower bound of n-1 on circuit depth is nearly tight for a variety of problems, and we prove linear upper bounds for additional problems. In particular, using only gates adding a wire (mod 2) into an adjacent wire, we can realize any linear operation in GL_n(2) as a circuit of depth 5n. We show that some linear operations require depth at least 2n+1.