In this paper we present tight lower-bounds and new upper-bounds for hypergraph and database problems. We give tight lower-bounds for finding minimum hypercycles. We give tight lower-bounds for a substantial regime of unweighted hypercycle. We also give a new faster algorithm for longer unweighted hypercycles. We give a worst-case to average-case reduction from detecting a subgraph of a hypergraph in the worst-case to counting subgraphs of hypergraphs in the average-case. We demonstrate two applications of this worst-case to average-case reduction, which result in average-case lower bounds for counting hypercycles in random hypergraphs and queries in average-case databases. Our tight upper and lower bounds for hypercycle detection in the worst-case have immediate implications for the average-case via our worst-case to average-case reductions.

This work establishes conditional lower bounds for average-case parity -counting versions of the problems k-XOR, k- SUM, and k-OV. The main contribution is a set of self-reductions for the problems, providing the first specific distributions, for which:

In this paper we study the fine-grained complexity of finding exact and approximate solutions to problems in P. Our main contribution is showing reductions from exact to approximate solution for a host of such problems. As one (notable) example, we show that the Closest-LCS-Pair problem (Given two sets of strings $A$ and $B$, compute exactly the maximum $\textsf{LCS}(a, b)$ with $(a, b) \in A \times B$) is equivalent to its approximation version (under near-linear time reductions, and with a constant approximation factor). More generally, we identify a class of problems, which we call BP-Pair-Class, comprising both exact and approximate solutions, and show that they are all equivalent under near-linear time reductions. Exploring this class and its properties, we also show: $\bullet$ Under the NC-SETH assumption (a significantly more relaxed assumption than SETH), solving any of the problems in this class requires essentially quadratic time. $\bullet$ Modest improvements on the running time of known algorithms (shaving log factors) would imply that NEXP is not in non-uniform $\textsf{NC}^1$. $\bullet$ Finally, we leverage our techniques to show new barriers for deterministic approximation algorithms for LCS. At the heart of these new results is a deep connection between interactive proof systems for bounded-space computations and the fine-grained complexity of exact and approximate solutions to problems in P. In particular, our results build on the proof techniques from the classical IP = PSPACE result.

Real-world data often comes in compressed form. Analyzing compressed data directly (without first decompressing it) can save space and time by orders of magnitude. In this work, we focus on fundamental sequence comparison problems and try to quantify the gain in time complexity when the underlying data is highly compressible. We consider grammar compression, which unifies many practically relevant compression schemes such as the Lempel–Ziv family, dictionary methods, and others. For two strings of total length N and total compressed size n, it is known that the edit distance and a longest common subsequence (LCS) can be computed exactly in time Õ(nN), as opposed to O(N2) for the uncompressed setting. Many real-world applications need to align multiple sequences simultaneously, and the fastest known exact algorithms for median edit distance and LCS of k strings run in O(Nk) time, whereas the one for center edit distance has a time complexity of O(N2k). This naturally raises the question if compression can help to reduce the running time significantly for k ≥ 3, perhaps to O(Nk/2 nk/2) or, more optimistically, to O(Nnk–1).1 Unfortunately, we show new lower bounds that rule out any improvement beyond Ω(Nk–1 n) time for any of these problems assuming the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), where again N and n represent the total length and the total compressed size, respectively. This answers an open question of Abboud, Backurs, Bringmann, and Künnemann (FOCS'17). In presence of such negative results, we ask if allowing approximation can help, and we show that approximation and compression together can be surprisingly effective for both multiple and two strings. We develop an Õ(Nk/2 nk/2)-time FPTAS for the median edit distance of k sequences, leading to a saving of nearly half the dimensions for highly-compressible sequences. In comparison, no O(Nk–Ω(1))-time PTAS is known for the median edit distance problem in the uncompressed setting. We obtain an improvement from for the center edit distance problem. For two strings, we get an -time FPTAS for both edit distance and LCS; note that this running time is o(N) whenever n ≪ N1/4. In contrast, for uncompressed strings, there is not even a subquadratic algorithm for LCS that has less than polynomial gap in the approximation factor. Building on the insight from our approximation algorithms, we also obtain several new and improved results for many fundamental distance measures including the edit, Hamming, and shift distances.

Statistics of small subgraph counts such as triangles, four-cycles, and s-t paths of short lengths reveal important structural properties of the underlying graph. These problems have been widely studied in social network analysis. In most relevant applications, the graphs are not only massive but also change dynamically over time. Most of these problems become hard in the dynamic setting when considering the worst case. In this paper, we ask whether the question of small subgraph counting over dynamic graphs is hard also in the average case. We consider the simplest possible average case model where the updates follow an Erdős-Rényi graph: each update selects a pair of vertices (u, v) uniformly at random and flips the existence of the edge (u, v). We develop new lower bounds and matching algorithms in this model for counting four-cycles, counting triangles through a specified point s, or a random queried point, and st paths of length 3, 4 and 5. Our results indicate while computing st paths of length 3, and 4 are easy in the average case with O(1) update time (note that they are hard in the worst case), it becomes hard when considering st paths of length 5. We introduce new techniques which allow us to get average-case hardness for these graph problems from the worst-case hardness of the Online Matrix vector problem (OMv). Our techniques rely on recent advances in fine-grained average-case complexity. Our techniques advance this literature, giving the ability to prove new lower bounds on average-case dynamic algorithms.

We present a linear space data structure for Dynamic Evaluation of k-CNF Boolean Formulas which achieves O(m^{1-1/k}) query and variable update time where m is the number of clauses in the formula and clauses are of size at most a constant k. Our algorithm is additionally able to count the total number of satisfied clauses. We then show how this data structure can be parallelized in the PRAM model to achieve O(log m) span (i.e. parallel time) and still O(m^{1-1/k}) work. This parallel algorithm works in the stronger Binary Fork model. We then give a series of lower bounds on the problem including an average-case result showing the lower bounds hold even when the updates to the variables are chosen at random. Specifically, a reduction from k-Clique shows that dynamically counting the number of satisfied clauses takes time at least n^{(2ω-3)/6 √{2k} -1 -o(√k)}, where 2 ≤ ω < 2.38 is the matrix multiplication constant. We show the Combinatorial k-Clique Hypothesis implies a lower bound of m^{(1-k^{-1/2})(1-o(1))} which suggests our algorithm is close to optimal without involving Matrix Multiplication or new techniques. We next give an average-case reduction to k-clique showing the prior lower bounds hold even when the updates are chosen at random. We use our conditional lower bound to show any Binary Fork algorithm solving these problems requires at least Ω(log m) span, which is tight against our algorithm in this model. Finally, we give an unconditional linear space lower bound for Dynamic k-CNF Boolean Formula Evaluation.

The recent emergence of fine-grained cryptography strongly motivates developing an average-case analogue of Fine-Grained Complexity (FGC). Prior work [Goldreich-Rothblum 2018, Boix-Adserà et al. 2019, Ball et al. 2017] developed worst-case to average-case fine-grained reductions (WCtoACFG) for certain algebraic and counting problems over natural distributions and used them to obtain a limited set of cryptographic primitives. To obtain stronger cryptographic primitives based on standard FGC assumptions, ideally, one would like to develop WCtoACFG reductions from the core hard problems of FGC, Orthogonal Vectors (OV), CNF-SAT, 3SUM, All-Pairs Shortest Paths (APSP) and zero- k clique. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether these problems actually are hard for any natural distribution. It is known, that e.g. OV can be solved quickly for very natural distributions [Kane-Williams 2019], and in this paper we show that even counting the number of OV pairs on average has a fast algorithm. This paper defines new versions of OV, kSUM and zero- k-clique that are both worst-case and average-case fine-grained hard assuming the core hypotheses of FGC. We then use these as a basis for fine-grained hardness and average-case hardness of other problems. The new problems represent their inputs in a certain “factored” form. We call them “factored”-OV, “factored”-zero- k-clique and “factored”-3SUM. We show that factored- k-OV and factored kSUM are equivalent and are complete for a class of problems defined over Boolean functions. Factored zero- k-clique is also complete, for a different class of problems. Our hard factored problems are also simple enough that we can reduce them to many other problems, e.g. to edit distance, k-LCS and versions of Max-Flow. We further consider counting variants of the factored problems and give WCtoACFG reductions for them for a natural distribution. Through FGC reductions we then get average-case hardness for well-studied problems like regular expression matching from standard worst-case FGC assumptions. To obtain our WCtoACFG reductions, we formalize the framework of [Boix-Adserà et al. 2019] that was used to give a WCtoACFG reduction for counting k-cliques. We define an explicit property of problems such that if a problem has that property one can use the framework on the problem to get a WCtoACFG self reduction. We then use the framework to slightly extend Bolx-Adserà et al.'s average-case counting k-cliques result to average-case hardness for counting arbitrary subgraph patterns of constant size in -partite graphs. The fine-grained public-key encryption scheme of [LaVigne et al.'20] is based on an average-case hardness hypothesis for the decision problem, zero- k-clique, and the known techniques for building such schemes break down for algebraic/counting problems. Meanwhile, the WCtoACFG reductions so far have only been for counting problems. To bridge this gap, we show that for a natural distribution, an algorithm that detects a zero- k-clique with high enough probability also implies an algorithm that can count zero- k-cliques with high probability. This gives hope that the FGC cryptoscheme of [LaVigne et al.'20] can be based on standard FGC assumptions.

We describe an algorithm to solve the problem of Boolean CNF-Satisfiability when the input formula is chosen randomly. We build upon the algorithms of Sch{ö}ning 1999 and Dantsin et al.~in 2002. The Sch{ö}ning algorithm works by trying many possible random assignments, and for each one searching systematically in the neighborhood of that assignment for a satisfying solution. Previous algorithms for this problem run in time $O(2^{n (1- Ω(1)/k)})$. Our improvement is simple: we count how many clauses are satisfied by each randomly sampled assignment, and only search in the neighborhoods of assignments with abnormally many satisfied clauses. We show that assignments like these are significantly more likely to be near a satisfying assignment. This improvement saves a factor of $2^{n Ω(\lg^2 k)/k}$, resulting in an overall runtime of $O(2^{n (1- Ω(\lg^2 k)/k)})$ for random $k$-SAT.

We consider space-efficient algorithms and conditional time lower bounds for finding cycles and walks in graphs. We give a reduction that connects the running time of undirected 2k-cycle to finding directed odd cycles, s-t connectivity in directed graphs, and Max-3-SAT. For example, we show that if 2k-cycle on O(n)-edge graphs can be solved in O(n^(1.5-ε)) time for some ε>0 then, a 2^(n(1-ε')) time algorithm exists for Max-3-SAT for some ε'>0. Additionally, we give a tight combinatorial lower bound for 2k-cycle detection, specifically when k is odd, of m^{2k/(k+1) +o(1)} given the Combinatorial k-Clique Hypothesis. On the algorithms side, we present a randomized algorithm for directed s-t connectivity using O(lg(n)^2) space and O(n^{lg(n)/2 + o(lg(n))}) expected time, giving a time improvement over Savitch’s famous algorithm, which takes at least n^{lg(n) - o(lg(n))} time. Under the conjecture that every O(lg(n)^2)-space algorithm for directed s-t connectivity requires n^Ω(lg(n)) time, we show that undirected 2k-cycle in O(lg(n)) space requires n^Ω(lg(k)) time.

The most studied linear algebraic operation, matrix multiplication, has surprisingly fast $O(n^ω)$ time algorithms for $ω<2.373$. On the other hand, the $(\min,+)$ matrix product which is at the heart of many fundamental graph problems such as APSP, has received only minor improvements over its brute-force cubic running time and is widely conjectured to require $n^{3-o(1)}$ time. There is a plethora of matrix products and graph problems whose complexity seems to lie in the middle of these two problems. For instance, the Min-Max matrix product, the Minimum Witness matrix product, APSP in directed unweighted graphs and determining whether an edge-colored graph contains a monochromatic triangle, can all be solved in $\tilde O(n^{(3+ω)/2})$ time. A similar phenomenon occurs for convolution problems, where analogous intermediate problems can be solved in $\tilde O(n^{1.5})$ time. Can one improve upon the running times for these intermediate problems, in either the matrix product or the convolution world? Or, alternatively, can one relate these problems to each other and to other key problems in a meaningful way? This paper makes progress on these questions by providing a network of fine-grained reductions. We show for instance that APSP in directed unweighted graphs and Minimum Witness product can be reduced to both the Min-Max product and a variant of the monochromatic triangle problem. We also show that a natural convolution variant of monochromatic triangle is fine-grained equivalent to the famous 3SUM problem. As this variant is solvable in $O(n^{1.5})$ time and 3SUM is in $O(n^2)$ time (and is conjectured to require $n^{2-o(1)}$ time), our result gives the first fine-grained equivalence between natural problems of different running times.

Cache-adaptive analysis was introduced to analyze the performance of an algorithm when the cache (or internal memory) available to the algorithm dynamically changes size. These memory-size fluctuations are, in fact, the common case in multi-core machines, where threads share cache and RAM. An algorithm is said to be efficiently cache-adaptive if it achieves optimal utilization of the dynamically changing cache. Cache-adaptive analysis was inspired by cache-oblivious analysis. Many (or even most) optimal cache-oblivious algorithms have an $(a,b,c)$-regular recursive structure. Such $(a, b, c)$-regular algorithms include Longest Common Subsequence, All Pairs Shortest Paths, Matrix Multiplication, Edit Distance, Gaussian Elimination Paradigm, etc. Bender et al. (2016) showed that some of these optimal cache-oblivious algorithms remain optimal even when cache changes size dynamically, but that in general they can be as much as logarithmic factor away from optimal. However, their analysis depends on constructing a highly structured, worst-case memory profile, or sequences of fluctuations in cache size. These worst-case profiles seem fragile, suggesting that the logarithmic gap may be an artifact of an unrealistically powerful adversary. We close the gap between cache-oblivious and cache-adaptive analysis by showing how to make a smoothed analysis of cache-adaptive algorithms via random reshuffling of memory fluctuations. Remarkably, we also show the limits of several natural forms of smoothing, including random perturbations of the cache size and randomizing the algorithm's starting time. Nonetheless, we show that if one takes an arbitrary profile and performs a random shuffle on when "significant events'' occur within the profile, then the shuffled profile becomes optimally cache-adaptive in expectation, even when the initial profile is adversarially constructed. These results suggest that cache-obliviousness is a solid foundation for achieving cache-adaptivity when the memory profile is not overly tailored to the algorithm structure.

This paper initiates the study of I/O algorithms (minimizing cache misses) from the perspective of fine-grained complexity (conditional polynomial lower bounds). Specifically, we aim to answer why sparse graph problems are so hard, and why the Longest Common Subsequence problem gets a savings of a factor of the size of cache times the length of a cache line, but no more. We take the reductions and techniques from complexity and fine-grained complexity and apply them to the I/O model to generate new (conditional) lower bounds as well as new faster algorithms. We also prove the existence of a time hierarchy for the I/O model, which motivates the fine-grained reductions. - Using fine-grained reductions, we give an algorithm for distinguishing 2 vs. 3 diameter and radius that runs in O(|E|^2/(MB)) cache misses, which for sparse graphs improves over the previous O(|V|^2/B) running time. - We give new reductions from radius and diameter to Wiener index and median. These reductions are new in both the RAM and I/O models. - We show meaningful reductions between problems that have linear-time solutions in the RAM model. The reductions use low I/O complexity (typically O(n/B)), and thus help to finely capture between "I/O linear time" O(n/B) and RAM linear time O(n). - We generate new I/O assumptions based on the difficulty of improving sparse graph problem running times in the I/O model. We create conjectures that the current best known algorithms for Single Source Shortest Paths (SSSP), diameter, and radius are optimal. - From these I/O-model assumptions, we show that many of the known reductions in the word-RAM model can naturally extend to hold in the I/O model as well (e.g., a lower bound on the I/O complexity of Longest Common Subsequence that matches the best known running time). - We prove an analog of the Time Hierarchy Theorem in the I/O model, further motivating the study of fine-grained algorithmic differences.

Fine-grained reductions have established equivalences between many core problems with Õ(n3)-time algorithms on n-node weighted graphs, such as Shortest Cycle, All-Pairs Shortest Paths (APSP), Radius, Replacement Paths, Second Shortest Paths, and so on. These problems also have Õ(mn)-time algorithms on m-edge n-node weighted graphs, and such algorithms have wider applicability. Are these mn bounds optimal when m << n2? Starting from the hypothesis that the minimum weight (2ℓ + 1)-Clique problem in edge weighted graphs requires n2ℓ+1–o(1) time, we prove that for all sparsities of the form m = Θ(n1+1/ℓ), there is no O(n2 + mn1–ε) time algorithm for ε > 0 for any of the below problems • Minimum Weight (2ℓ + 1)-Cycle in a directed weighted graph, • Shortest Cycle in a directed weighted graph, • APSP in a directed or undirected weighted graph, • Radius (or Eccentricities) in a directed or undirected weighted graph, • Wiener index of a directed or undirected weighted graph, • Replacement Paths in a directed weighted graph, • Second Shortest Path in a directed weighted graph, • Betweenness Centrality of a given node in a directed weighted graph. That is, we prove hardness for a variety of sparse graph problems from the hardness of a dense graph problem. Our results also lead to new conditional lower bounds from several related hypothesis for unweighted sparse graph problems including k-cycle, shortest cycle, Radius, Wiener index and APSP.

Systems that require programs to share the cache such as shared-memory systems, multicore architectures, and time-sharing systems are ubiquitous in modern computing. Moreover, practitioners have observed that the cache behavior of an algorithm is often critical to its overall performance. Despite the increasing popularity of systems where programs share a cache, the theoretical behavior of most algorithms is not yet well understood. There is a gap between our knowledge about how algorithms perform in a static cache versus a dynamic cache where the amount of memory available to a given program fluctuates. Cache-adaptive analysis is a method of analyzing how well algorithms use the cache in the face of changing memory size. Bender ηl showed that optimal cache-adaptivity does not follow from cache-optimality in a static cache. Specifically, they proved that some cache-optimal algorithms in a static cache are suboptimal when subject to certain memory profiles (patterns of memory fluctuations). For example, the canonical cache-oblivious divide-and-conquer formulation of Strassen's algorithm for matrix multiplication is suboptimal in the cache-adaptive model because it does a linear scan to add submatrices together. In this paper, we introduce scan hiding, the first technique for converting a class of non-cache-adaptive algorithms with linear scans to optimally cache-adaptive variants. We work through a concrete example of scan-hiding on Strassen's algorithm, a sub-cubic algorithm for matrix multiplication that involves linear scans at each level of its recursive structure. All of the currently known sub-cubic algorithms for matrix multiplication include linear scans, however, so our technique applies to a large class of algorithms.

In recent years it has become popular to study dynamic problems in a sensitivity setting: Instead of allowing for an arbitrary sequence of updates, the sensitivity model only allows to apply batch updates of small size to the original input data. The sensitivity model is particularly appealing since recent strong conditional lower bounds ruled out fast algorithms for many dynamic problems, such as shortest paths, reachability, or subgraph connectivity. In this paper we prove conditional lower bounds for these and additional problems in a sensitivity setting. For example, we show that under the Boolean Matrix Multiplication (BMM) conjecture combinatorial algorithms cannot compute the (4/3-\varepsilon)-approximate diameter of an undirected unweighted dense graph with truly subcubic preprocessing time and truly subquadratic update/query time. This result is surprising since in the static setting it is not clear whether a reduction from BMM to diameter is possible. We further show under the BMM conjecture that many problems, such as reachability or approximate shortest paths, cannot be solved faster than by recomputation from scratch even after only one or two edge insertions. We extend our reduction from BMM to Diameter to give a reduction from All Pairs Shortest Paths to Diameter under one deletion in weighted graphs. This is intriguing, as in the static setting it is a big open problem whether Diameter is as hard as APSP. We further get a nearly tight lower bound for shortest paths after two edge deletions based on the APSP conjecture. We give more lower bounds under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis. Many of our lower bounds also hold for static oracle data structures where no sensitivity is required. Finally, we give the first algorithm for the (1+\varepsilon)-approximate radius, diameter, and eccentricity problems in directed or undirected unweighted graphs in case of single edges failures. The algorithm has a truly subcubic running time for graphs with a truly subquadratic number of edges; it is tight w.r.t. the conditional lower bounds we obtain.

Given a set of numbers, the k-SUM problem asks for a subset of k numbers that sums to zero. When the numbers are integers, the time and space complexity of k-SUM is generally studied in the word-RAM model; when the numbers are reals, the complexity is studied in the real-RAM model, and space is measured by the number of reals held in memory at any point. We present a time and space efficient deterministic self-reduction for the k-SUM problem which holds for both models, and has many interesting consequences. To illustrate: - 3-SUM is in deterministic time O(n^2*lg(lg(n))/lg(n)) and space O(sqrt(n*lg(n)/lg(lg(n)))). In general, any polylogarithmic-time improvement over quadratic time for 3-SUM can be converted into an algorithm with an identical time improvement but low space complexity as well. - 3-SUM is in deterministic time O(n^2) and space O(sqrt(n)), derandomizing an algorithm of Wang. - A popular conjecture states that 3-SUM requires n^{2-o(1)} time on the word-RAM. We show that the 3-SUM Conjecture is in fact equivalent to the (seemingly weaker) conjecture that every O(n^{.51})-space algorithm for 3-SUM requires at least n^{2-o(1)} time on the word-RAM. - For k >= 4, k-SUM is in deterministic O(n^{k-2+2/k}) time and O(sqrt(n)) space.

Memory efficiency and locality have substantial impact on the performance of programs, particularly when operating on large data sets. Thus, memory- or I/O-efficient algorithms have received significant attention both in theory and practice. The widespread deployment of multicore machines, however, brings new challenges. Specifically, since the memory (RAM) is shared across multiple processes, the effective memory-size allocated to each process fluctuates over time. This paper presents techniques for designing and analyzing algorithms in a cache-adaptive setting, where the RAM available to the algorithm changes over time. These techniques make analyzing algorithms in the cache-adaptive model almost as easy as in the external memory, or DAM model. Our techniques enable us to analyze a wide variety of algorithms --- Master-Method-style algorithms, Akra-Bazzi-style algorithms, collections of mutually recursive algorithms, and algorithms, such as FFT, that break problems of size N into subproblems of size Theta(Nc).