Blum's speedup theorem

In computational complexity theory, Blum's speedup theorem, first stated by Manuel Blum in 1967, is a fundamental theorem about the complexity of computable functions.

Each computable function has an infinite number of different program representations in a given programming language. In the theory of algorithms one often strives to find a program with the smallest complexity for a given computable function and a given complexity measure (such a program could be called optimal). Blum's speedup theorem shows that for any complexity measure, there exists a computable function such that there is no optimal program computing it, because every program has a program of lower complexity. This also rules out the idea that there is a way to assign to arbitrary functions their computational complexity, meaning the assignment to any f of the complexity of an optimal program for f. This does of course not exclude the possibility of finding the complexity of an optimal program for certain specific functions.