A Constant-Space Sequential Model of Computation for First-Order Logic

AbstractWe define and justify a natural sequential model of computation with a constant amount of read/write work space, despite unlimited (polynomial) access to read-only input and write-only output. The model is deterministic, uniform, and sequential. The constant work space is modeled by a finite number of destructively read boolean variables, assignable by formulas over the canonical boolean operations. We show that computation on this model is equivalent to expressibility in first-order logic, giving a duality between (read-once) constant-space serial algorithms and constant-time parallel algorithms