New Algorithm Breaks Speed Limit for Solving Linear Equations

“This is one of the most fundamental problems in computing,” said Mark Giesbrecht of the University of Waterloo. “Now we have a proof that we can go faster.”

"The new method, by Richard Peng and Santosh Vempala of the Georgia Institute of Technology, was posted online in July and presented in January at the annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, where it won the best-paper award."