A Lower Bound for the Shortest Path Problem

Abstract

We show that the shortest path problem cannot be solved in o(logn) time on an unbounded fan-in PRAM without bit operations using poly(n) processors, even when the bit-lengths of the weights on the edges are restricted to be of size O(log3n). This shows that the matrix-based repeated squaring algorithm for the shortest path problem is optimal in the unbounded fan-in PRAM model without bit operations. © 2001 Academic Press.