Turing Machines with Two-level Memory: A Deep Look into the Input/Output Complexity

The input/output complexity, which is the complexity of data exchange between the main memory and the external memory, has been elaborately studied by a lot of former researchers. However, the existing works failed to consider the input/output complexity in a computation model point of view. In this paper we remedy this by proposing three variants of Turing machine that include external memory and the mechanism of exchanging data between main memory and external memory. Based on these new models, the input/output complexity is deeply studied. We discussed the relationship between input/output complexity and the other complexity measures such as time complexity and parameterized complexity, which is not considered by former researchers. We also define the external access trace complexity, which reflects the physical behavior of magnetic disks and gives a theoretical evidence of IO-efficient algorithms.