A look at the math that OpenAI claims computes faster Fourier transforms
The claimed speedup only exists in asymptotic notation, with constants and assumptions that make it useless on real machines.
Ben Recht argues OpenAI’s FFT result is a “galactic” algorithm: technically faster in big-O terms, but slower than the standard FFT until impossible input sizes. The post says the method relies on exact complex arithmetic and numbers whose magnitudes grow so large that bit-level storage would become effectively exponential. Recht frames the result as a failure of the computational model, not a practical advance in signal processing. Source: HN · Transformers' note
Ben Recht argues OpenAI’s FFT result is a “galactic” algorithm: technically faster in big-O terms, but slower than the standard FFT until impossible input sizes. The post says the method relies on exact complex arithmetic and numbers whose magnitudes grow so large that bit-level storage would become effectively exponential. Recht frames the result as a failure of the computational model, not a practical advance in signal processing. Source: HN · Transformers' note
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