Lower bounds for set intersection queries

Abstract

We consider the followingset intersection reporting problem. We have a collection of initially empty sets and would like to process an intermixed sequence ofn updates (insertions into and deletions from individual sets) andq queries (reporting the intersection of two sets). We cast this problem in thearithmetic model of computation of Fredman [F1] and Yao [Ya2] and show that any algorithm that fits in this model must take time Ω(q+n√q) to process a sequence ofn updates andq queries, ignoring factors that are polynomial in logn. We also show that this bound is tight in this model of computation, again to within a polynomial in logn factor, improving upon a result of Yellin [Ye]. Furthermore, we consider the caseq=O(n) with an additional space restriction. We only allow the use ofm memory locations, wherem ≤n^3/2. We show a tight bound of Θ(n²/m^1/3) for a sequence ofn operations, again ignoring the polynomial in logn factors.