Abstract

In the LFT approach to Exact Real Arithmetic, we study the question how many argument digits are needed to produce a certain number of result digits. We present upper and lower bounds for many simple functions and operations, and for exponential and square root. 1 Introduction In this paper, we work in an approach to Exact Real Arithmetic where real numbers are represented as potentially infinite streams of information units, called digits. Hence, an algorithm to compute a certain expression over real numbers is a device that reads some input streams and produces an output stream. Algorithms like this never terminate, but are considered as satisfactory if they produce any desired number of output digits in finite time, i.e., from a finite number of input digits by a finite number of internal operations. The (time) efficiency of a real number algorithm indicates how much time T (n) it takes to produce n result digits. It clearly depends on the number of input digits needed to produce ...

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