Blum's speedup theorem

In computational complexity theory, Blum's speedup theorem, first stated by Manuel Blum in 1967, is a fundamental theorem about the complexity of computable functions.

Each computable function has an infinite number of different program representations in a given programming language. In the theory of algorithms one often strives to find a program with the smallest complexity for a given computable function and a given complexity measure (such a program could be called optimal). Blum's speedup theorem shows that for any complexity measure there are computable functions that are not optimal with respect to that measure.^{[further explanation needed]} This also rules out the idea there is a way to assign to arbitrary functions their computational complexity, meaning the assignment to any f of the complexity of an optimal program for f. This does of course not exclude the possibility of finding the complexity of an optimal program for certain specific functions.

Speedup theorem[]

Given a Blum complexity measure ${\displaystyle (\varphi ,\Phi )}$ and a total computable function ${\displaystyle f}$ with two parameters, then there exists a total computable predicate ${\displaystyle g}$ (a boolean valued computable function) so that for every program ${\displaystyle i}$ for ${\displaystyle g}$, there exists a program ${\displaystyle j}$ for ${\displaystyle g}$ so that for almost all ${\displaystyle x}$

${\displaystyle f(x,\Phi _{j}(x))\leq \Phi _{i}(x)\,}$

${\displaystyle f}$ is called the speedup function. The fact that it may be as fast-growing as desired (as long as it is computable) means that the phenomenon of always having a program of smaller complexity remains even if by "smaller" we mean "significantly smaller" (for instance, quadratically smaller, exponentially smaller).

See also[]

• Gödel's speed-up theorem

References[]

• Blum, Manuel (1967). "A Machine-Independent Theory of the Complexity of Recursive Functions" (PDF). Journal of the ACM. 14 (2): 322–336. doi:10.1145/321386.321395.
• Van Emde Boas, Peter (1975). Bečvář, Jiří (ed.). "Ten years of speedup". Proceedings of Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, 4th Symposium, Mariánské Lázně, September 1-5, 1975. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag. 32: 13–29. doi:10.1007/3-540-07389-2_179..

External links[]

• Weisstein, Eric W. "Blum's Speed-Up Theorem". MathWorld.