Descriptive Complexity for Distributed Computing with Circuits

Abstract

We consider distributed algorithms in the realistic scenario where distributed message passing is operated by circuits. We show that within this setting, modal substitution calculus MSC precisely captures the expressive power of circuits. The result is established via constructing translations that are highly efficient in relation to size. We also observe that the coloring algorithm based on Cole-Vishkin can be specified by logarithmic size programs (and thus also logarithmic size circuits) in the bounded-degree scenario.