Learned index structures aim to accelerate queries by training machine learning models to approximate the rank function associated with a database attribute. While effective in practice, their theoretical limitations are not fully understood. We present a framework for proving lower bounds on query time for learned indexes, expressed in terms of their space overhead and parameterized by the model class used for approximation. Our formulation captures a broad family of one-dimensional learned indexes, including most existing designs, as piecewise model-based predictors. We solve the problem of lower bounding query time in two steps: first, we use probabilistic tools to control the effect of sampling when the database attribute is drawn from a probability distribution. Then, we analyze the approximation-theoretic problem of how to optimally represent a cumulative distribution function with approximators from a given model class. Within this framework, we derive lower bounds under a range of modeling and distributional assumptions, paying particular attention to the case of piecewise linear and piecewise constant model classes, which are common in practical implementations. Our analysis shows how tools from approximation theory, such as quantization and Kolmogorov widths, can be leveraged to formalize the space-time trade-offs inherent to learned index structures. The resulting bounds illuminate core limitations of these methods.

Encoding information in combinations of pre-synthesised deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) strands (referred to as motifs) is an interesting approach to DNA storage that could potentially circumvent the prohibitive costs of nucleotide-by-nucleotide DNA synthesis. Based on our analysis of an empirical data set from HelixWorks, we propose two channel models for this setup (with and without interference) and analyse their fundamental limits. We propose a coding scheme that approaches those limits by leveraging all information available at the output of the channel, in contrast to earlier schemes developed for a similar setup by Preuss et al. We highlight an important connection between channel capacity curves and the fundamental trade-off between synthesis (writing) and sequencing (reading) costs, and offer a way to mitigate an exponential growth in decoding complexity with the size of the motif library.

We propose four finite-length scaling laws to predict the frame error rate (FER) performance in the waterfall region of spatially-coupled low-density parity-check code ensembles under full belief propagation (BP) decoding with a limit on the number of decoding iterations and a scaling law for sliding window decoding, also with limited iterations. The laws for full BP decoding provide a choice between accuracy and computational complexity; a good balance between them is achieved by the law that models the number of decoded bits after a certain number of BP iterations by a time-integrated Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. This framework is developed further to model sliding window decoding as a race between the integrated Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and an absorbing barrier that corresponds to the left boundary of the sliding window. The proposed scaling laws yield accurate FER predictions for the semi-structured code ensembles proposed by Olmos and Urbanke.

We analyze the finite-length performance of spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes under window decoding over the binary erasure channel. In particular, we propose a refinement of the scaling law by Olmos and Urbanke for the frame error rate (FER) of terminated SC-LDPC ensembles under full belief propagation (BP) decoding. The refined scaling law models the decoding process as two independent Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, in correspondence to the two decoding waves that propagate toward the center of the coupled chain for terminated SC-LDPC codes. We then extend the proposed scaling law to predict the performance of (terminated) SC-LDPC code ensembles under the more practical sliding window decoding. Finally, we extend this framework to predict the bit error rate (BER) and block error rate (BLER) of SC-LDPC code ensembles. The proposed scaling law yields very accurate predictions of the FER, BLER, and BER for both full BP and window decoding.

We propose a refined scaling law to predict the finite-length performance in the waterfall region of spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes over the binary erasure channel. In particular, we introduce some improvements to the scaling law proposed by Olmos and Urbanke that result in a better agreement between the predicted and simulated frame error rate. We also show how the scaling law can be extended to predict the bit error rate performance.