Skip to main content
Log in

Does indirect addressing matter?

A note

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Acta Informatica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In the study of random access machines (RAMs) and the complexities associated with their algorithms, the availability of indirect addressing often creates an analysis obstacle. We show that for RAMs equipped with a sufficiently rich set of basic operations, indirect addressing does not increase computational power, and can be simulated either in linear time or on-line in real time. These results pertain to the uniform cost model and, particularly, assume a unit cost variable shift.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aho, A.V., Hopcroft, J.E., Ullman, J.D.: The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms. Addision-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Amram, A.M., Galil, Z.: On pointers versus addresses. J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 39(3), 617–648 (1992)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Ben-Amram, A.M., Galil, Z.: On the power of the shift instruction. Inf. Comput. 117, 19–36 (1995)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Mansour, Y., Schieber, B., Tiwari, P.: A lower bound for integer greatest common divisor computations. J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 38(2), 453–471 (1991)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Mansour, Y., Schieber, B., Tiwari, P.: Lower bounds for computations with the floor operation. SIAM J. Comput. 20(2), 315–327 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  • Paul, W., Simon, J.: Decision trees and random access machines. In: Logic and Algorithmic (Zurich, 1980), Monograph. Enseign. Math., vol.30, pp. 331–340. Univ. Genève, Geneva (1982)

  • Schönhage, A.: On the power of random access machines. In: Automata, Languages and Programming (Sixth Colloq., Graz, 1979), Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., vol.71, pp. 520–529. Springer, Berlin, (1979)

  • Simon, J.: On feasible numbers (preliminary version). In: Conference Record of the Ninth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (Boulder, Colo., 1977), pp. 195–207. Assoc. Comput. Mach., New York, (1977)

  • Simon, J.: Division in idealized unit cost RAMs. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 22(3), 421–441 (1981). (Special issue dedicated to Michael Machtey)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Turing, Alan M.: On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. 42, 230–265 (1936)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Brand.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Brand, M. Does indirect addressing matter?. Acta Informatica 49, 485–491 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-012-0171-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-012-0171-1

Keywords

Navigation