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On the power of probabilistic choice in synchronous parallel computations

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Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 1982)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 140))

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Abstract

This paper introduces probabilistic choice to synchronous parallel machine models; in particular parallel RAMs. The power of probabilistic choice in parallel computations is illustrated by parallelizing some known probabilistic sequential algorithms. We characterize the computational complexity of time, space, and processor bounded probabilistic prallel RAMs in terms of the computational complexity of probabilistic sequential RAMs. We show that parallelism uniformly speeds up time bounded probabilistic sequential RAM computations by nearly a quadratic factor. We also show that probabilistic choice can be, eliminated from parallel computations by introducing nonuniformity.

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF-MCS82-00269 and the Office of Naval Research Contract N00014.-80-C-0674.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aiken Computation Laboratory Division of Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    John H. Reif

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  1. John H. Reif
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Mogens Nielsen Erik Meineche Schmidt

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© 1982 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Reif, J.H. (1982). On the power of probabilistic choice in synchronous parallel computations. In: Nielsen, M., Schmidt, E.M. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 1982. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 140. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0012790

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0012790

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-11576-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39308-5

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