Dr. Gerhard Buntrock: “Has Noam Chomsky oversee a language class?”,
Date: hursdar, 22nd of May 1997, 11a.m c.t.
Place: Auditorium V1, Med. University of Lübeck
27th of February till 1st of March 1997 at the MU Lübeck, Institure for theoretical computer science
The 1980's saw rapid and exciting development of techniques for proving lower bounds in circuit complexity. This pace has slowed recently, and there has even been work indicating that quite different proof techniques must be employed to advance beyond the current frontier of circuit lower bounds. Although this has engendered pessimism in some quarters, there have in fact been many positive developments in the past few years showing that significant progress is possible on many fronts.
This talk will give a gentle introduction to the field of circuit complexity, and give a survey of the most important successes and failures of the field. Particular emphasis will be placed on the main obstacles to progress that have been identified, as well as on recent advances toward overcoming these obstacles.
