Lower bounds for matrix product, in bounded depth circuits with arbitrary gates

• Authors: Ran Raz;Amir Shpilka
• Venue: STOC '01 Proceedings of the thirty-third annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
• Year: 2001

We prove super-linear lower bounds for the number of edges in constant depth circuits with n inputs and up to n outputs. Our lower bounds are proved for all types of constant depth circuits, e.g., constant depth arithmetic circuits and constant depth Boolean circuits with arbitrary gates. The bounds apply for several explicit functions, and, most importantly, for matrix product. In particular, we obtain the following results:We show that the number of edges in any constant depth arithmetic circuit for matrix product (over any field is super-linear in m^2 (where m \times m is the size of each matrix). That is, the lower bound is super-linear in the number of input variables. Moreover, if the circuit is bilinear the result applies also for the case where the circuit gets for free any product of two linear functions.We show that the number of edges in any constant depth arithmetic circuit for the trace of the product of 3 matrices (over fields with characteristic~0) is super-linear in m^2. (Note that the trace is a single-output function).We give explicit examples for n Boolean functions f_1,\dots,f_ , such that any constant depth for f_1,...,f_n has a super-linear number of edges. The lower bound is proved also for circuits with arbitrary gates over any finite field. The bound applies for matrix product over finite fields as well as for several other explicit functions.