Customer Reviews

Communication Complexity

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book provides a large set of applications that is based on the theory of communication complexity developed by Yao et. al. The material addresses important domains such as covers, randomization and other advanced topics related to two-party communication complexity.
The sections that I found completely interesting are: randomization versus determinism, distributional complexity, protocol rounds and asymmetric communications.
A very enlightening section on communication with partial information is well-presented and explained with examples and exercises. The chapters on "Multiparty Communication Complexity", "Variable Partition Models", and "Networks & VLSI" are exceptionally informative. These chapters provide the mathematical foundation required for the study of several practical systems. For example, the time and area parameters, usually encountered in VLSI design problems, are discussed and a theoretically- efficient chip layout schema is proposed.
The book is radically distinctive and without equal. It provides a large number of applications, examples, and exercises to assist the reader grasp the concepts of the theory of communication complexity.
It is a valuable asset for researchers in computer science, computer engineering and information theory.

Communication Complexity studies how many bits ALICE and BOB have to exchange to computer a function. Questinos of this sort are interesting in and of themselves AND also because they help proof lower Bounds on models of computation like circuits and decision trees. THIS book is readable and gives you all the basics that you need. The authors present clean proofs of basic theorems on how many bits are needed, and also supply links to other models nicely, and proof lower bounds on those models. This should be in the library of every theoretical computer scientist and every computer scientist that works on communication protocols. (gasarch@cs.umd.edu)