Communication complexity towards lower bounds on circuit depth

M. Karchmer et al. (1991) considered the circuit depth complexity of n-bit Boolean function constructed by composing up to d=log n/log log n levels of k=log-n-bit Boolean functions. Any such function is in AC/sup 1/. They conjecture that circuit depth is additive under composition, which would imply that any (bounded fan-in) circuit for this problem requires dk in Omega (log/sup 2/ n/log log n) depth. This would separate AC/sup 1/ from NC/sup 1/. They recommend using the communication game characterization of circuit depth. They suggest an intermediate problem which they call the universal composition relation. An almost optimal lower bound of dk-O(d/sup 2/(k log k)/sup 1/2/) is given for this problem. In addition, a proof, directly in terms of communication complexity, that there is a function on k bits requiring Omega (k) circuit depth is presented.