Recently, M. Kompatscher proved that for each finite supernilpotent algebra A in a congruence modular variety, there is a polynomial time algorithm to solve polynomial equations over this algebra. Let mu be the maximal arity of the fundamental operations of A, and let d := |A|^{log_2 mu + log_2 |A| + 1}. Applying a method that G. Károlyi and C. Szabó had used to solve equations over finite nilpotent rings, we show that for A, there is c in N such that a solution of every system of s equations in n variables can be found by testing at most c n^{sd} (instead of all |A|^n possible) assignments to the variables. This also yields new information on some circuit satisfiability problems.

In this note we present some algorithms to deal with nearrings, the appropriate algebraic structure to study non-linear functions. This is similar the role of rings in the theory of linear functions or that of groups for permutations. In particular, we give efficient algorithms that deal with big nearrings that are given by a small set of generators. In this context, generating involves composition as well as point-wise addition. In the extreme case, one transformation of a group of order n can generate a set of up to nn transformations.