http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1909333786

On the Complexity of Designing Distributed Protocols

We study the complexity of two problems of distributed computation and decision-making. We show that deciding whether two distant agents can arrive at compatible decisions without any communication one agent has three or more alternatives. We also show that minimizing the amount of communication necessary for the distributed computation of a function, when two distant computers receive each a part of the input, is NP-complete. This proves a conjecture due to A. Yao. (Author).

Open All Close All