Related papers: Average-Case Lower Bounds and Satisfiability Algor…
In order to formally understand the power of neural computing, we first need to crack the frontier of threshold circuits with two and three layers, a regime that has been surprisingly intractable to analyze. We prove the first super-linear…
We prove an average-case depth hierarchy theorem for Boolean circuits over the standard basis of $\mathsf{AND}$, $\mathsf{OR}$, and $\mathsf{NOT}$ gates. Our hierarchy theorem says that for every $d \geq 2$, there is an explicit…
We show that sharp thresholds for Boolean functions directly imply average-case circuit lower bounds. More formally we show that any Boolean function exhibiting a sharp enough threshold at \emph{arbitrary} critical density cannot be…
Comparator circuits are a natural circuit model for studying bounded fan-out computation whose power sits between nondeterministic branching programs and general circuits. Despite having been studied for nearly three decades, the first…
QAC circuits are quantum circuits with one-qubit gates and Toffoli gates of arbitrary arity. QAC$^0$ circuits are QAC circuits of constant depth, and are quantum analogues of AC$^0$ circuits. We prove the following: $\bullet$ For all $d \ge…
One of the prominent current challenges in complexity theory is the attempt to prove lower bounds for $TC^0$, the class of constant-depth, polynomial-size circuits with majority gates. Relying on the results of Williams (2013), an appealing…
Motivated by the resurgence of neural networks in being able to solve complex learning tasks we undertake a study of high depth networks using ReLU gates which implement the function $x \mapsto \max\{0,x\}$. We try to understand the role of…
We show that there is a randomized algorithm that, when given a small constant-depth Boolean circuit $C$ made up of gates that compute constant-degree Polynomial Threshold functions or PTFs (i.e., Boolean functions that compute signs of…
A notorious open question in circuit complexity is whether Boolean operations of arbitrary arity can efficiently be expressed using modular counting gates only. H{\aa}stad's celebrated switching lemma yields exponential lower bounds for the…
In this paper, we investigate computational power of threshold circuits and other theoretical models of neural networks in terms of the following four complexity measures: size (the number of gates), depth, weight and energy. Here the…
Let $ACC \circ THR$ be the class of constant-depth circuits comprised of AND, OR, and MOD$m$ gates (for some constant $m > 1$), with a bottom layer of gates computing arbitrary linear threshold functions. This class of circuits can be seen…
We continue the program of proving circuit lower bounds via circuit satisfiability algorithms. So far, this program has yielded several concrete results, proving that functions in $\text{Quasi-NP} = \text{NTIME}[n^{(\log n)^{O(1)}}]$ and…
In this paper, we show that for every constant $0 < \epsilon < 1/2$ and for every constant $d \geq 2$, the minimum size of a depth $d$ Boolean circuit that $\epsilon$-approximates Majority function on $n$ variables is…
We establish a generic form of hardness amplification for the approximability of constant-depth Boolean circuits by polynomials. Specifically, we show that if a Boolean circuit cannot be pointwise approximated by low-degree polynomials to…
We consider the problem of efficiently enumerating the satisfying assignments to $\AC^0$ circuits. We give a zero-error randomized algorithm which takes an $\AC^0$ circuit as input and constructs a set of restrictions which partition…
$\mathrm{QAC}^0$ is the family of constant-depth polynomial-size quantum circuits consisting of arbitrary single qubit unitaries and multi-qubit Toffoli gates. It was introduced by Moore [arXiv: 9903046] as a quantum counterpart of…
We present a top-down lower-bound method for depth-$4$ boolean circuits. In particular, we give a new proof of the well-known result that the parity function requires depth-$4$ circuits of size exponential in $n^{1/3}$. Our proof is an…
In this work, we prove the strongest known lower bounds for QAC$^0$, allowing polynomially many gates and ancillae. Our main results show that: (1) Depth-3 QAC$^0$ circuits cannot compute PARITY, and require $\Omega(\exp(\sqrt{n}))$ gates…
The threshold degree of a Boolean function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial $p$ that represents $f$ in sign: $\mathrm{sgn}\; p(x)=(-1)^{f(x)}.$ A related notion is sign-rank, defined for a Boolean…
This paper gives the first separation between the power of {\em formulas} and {\em circuits} of equal depth in the $\mathrm{AC}^0[\oplus]$ basis (unbounded fan-in AND, OR, NOT and MOD$_2$ gates). We show, for all $d(n) \le O(\frac{\log…