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Limitations to Computing Quadratic Functions on Reed-Solomon Encoded Data

Authors Keller Blackwell, Mary Wootters

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LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.19.pdf
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ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Error-correcting codes
Keywords
  • Distributed computation
  • Reed-Solomon codes

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Abstract

We study the problem of low-bandwidth non-linear computation on Reed-Solomon encoded data. Given an [n,k] Reed-Solomon encoding of a message vector 𝐟 ∈ 𝔽_q^k, and a polynomial g ∈ 𝔽_q[X₁, X₂, …, X_k], a user wishing to evaluate g(𝐟) is given local query access to each codeword symbol. The query response is allowed to be the output of an arbitrary function evaluated locally on the codeword symbol, and the user’s aim is to minimize the total information downloaded in order to compute g(𝐟). This problem has been studied before for linear functions g; in this work we initiate the study of non-linear functions by starting with quadratic monomials.
For q = p^e and distinct i,j ∈ [k], we show that any scheme evaluating the quadratic monomial g_{i,j} := X_i X_j must download at least 2 log₂(q-1) - 3 bits of information when p is an odd prime, and at least 2log₂(q-2) -4 bits when p = 2. When k = 2, our result shows that one cannot do significantly better than the naive bound of k log₂(q) bits, which is enough to recover all of 𝐟. This contrasts sharply with prior work for low-bandwidth evaluation of linear functions g(𝐟) over Reed-Solomon encoded data, for which it is possible to substantially improve upon this bound [Venkatesan Guruswami and Mary Wootters, 2016; Tamo et al., 2018; Shutty and Wootters, 2021; Kiah et al., 2024; Con and Tamo, 2022].
Some proofs have been omitted from this extended abstract; the full version can be found at [Keller Blackwell and Mary Wootters, 2025].

Cite As Get BibTex

Keller Blackwell and Mary Wootters. Limitations to Computing Quadratic Functions on Reed-Solomon Encoded Data. In 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 362, pp. 19:1-19:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.19

Author Details

Keller Blackwell
  • Stanford University, CA, USA
Mary Wootters
  • Stanford University, CA, USA

References

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