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I was wondering whether someone could help me resolve an issue I have understanding the proof given for Savitch’s theorem in the Sipser text (3rd edition). The question I have is more or less identical to the first question given in a previous post (The crux of Savitch's Theorem); which has remained unanswered – hence I’ll re-state the question and elaborate on the details more in this post.

On page 335, the function ‘CANYIELD’ is described:

CANYIELD = “On input c1, c2, and t:

  1. If t = 1, then test directly whether c1 = c2 or whether c1 yields c2 in one step according to the rules of N. Accept if either test succeeds; reject if both fail.
  2. If t > 1, then for each configuration cm of N using space f(n):
  3.       Run CANYIELD(c1, cm, t/2 ). 

  4.       Run CANYIELD(cm, c2, t/2 ). 

  5.       If steps 3 and 4 both accept, then accept.
  6. If haven’t yet accepted, reject.”

My question concerns step 2 of this procedure: namely how exactly does it select cm of N? It says ‘for each configuration of N’ – but as far as I can tell no specific method is described for how M can implement this [which is important, since we need to be able to verify that this selection can be done in O(f2(n))]. It is not obvious to me how you would be able to know what all of N’s legal configurations are for a given input without running it and storing the computation tree in memory – which obviously we cannot do because it could be exponential in the size of the input. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

SGR
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1 Answers1

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You can enumerate every possible configuration $c_m$ of $N$, this process takes only $O(f(n))$ space

First, lets consider the number of configuration of $N$ that runs in $f(n)$ space

If $N$ runs in $f(n)$ space, has $c$ states, $c = \vert Q \vert $, and $g$ tape symbols, $g = \vert \Gamma \vert$, then the total number of strings that can appear on tape are $g^{f(n)}$, we can be in any of the $c$ states, and the head can be in any of the $f(n)$ positions, hence the total number of configurations is $c \cdot f(n) \cdot g^{f(n)} = O(f(n)2^{f(n)})$

We can encode these configurations, hence the space needed would be $O(log(f(n) \cdot 2^{f(n)})) = O(log(f(n)) + log(2^{f(n)})) = O(f(n))$

Hence we only need $O(f(n))$ space

For completion, lets dive into more details of how we can do this in an easy way

A configuration $c_m$ as we have shown occupies $O(f(n))$ space, meaning it takes $O(f(n))$ cells

Each cell is filled with a symbol $s \in C = Q \cup \Gamma$, where $Q$ is the set of $N$ states and $\Gamma$ is the tape alphabet

Note that $\vert C \vert$ is a constant, and hence each symbol $s \in C$ can have a binary encoding of length $d = \log(\vert C \vert)$, again $d$ is a constant

So, we can replace each symbol $s \in C$ by its $d$-long binary encoding, and we get a binary configuration of length $O(d \cdot f(n)) = O(f(n))$, storing the entire map from symbols to binary code should take only constant space

Now its easy to enumerate every configuration from $000 \ldots 000$ to $111 \ldots 111$, we can use the stored map to change the configuration from binary string to symbols $s \in C$ or vice versa in $f(n)$ space

Anwar
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