Top-down lower bounds for depth-three circuits

AbstractWe present a top-down lower bound method for depth-three ⋎, ⋏, ¬-circuits which is simpler than the previous methods and in some cases gives better lower bounds. In particular, we prove that depth-three ⋎, ⋏, ¬-circuits that compute parity (or majority) require size at least $$2^{0.618...\sqrt n } (or 2^{0.849...\sqrt n } $$ , respectively). This is the first simple proof of a strong lower bound by a top-down argument for non-monotone circuits.

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