Skip to main content
2 of 2
added 606 characters in body
Pete L. Clark
  • 65.4k
  • 12
  • 241
  • 381

The following paper seems to be the first to do what you want:

MR0955143 (89j:11122) Greenberg, Harold(1-CUNY2-S) Solution to a linear Diophantine equation for nonnegative integers. J. Algorithms 9 (1988), no. 3, 343--353.

$ $

The paper contains a fundamental improvement in the theory of linear Diophantine equations with three variables. Let $1 < a< b < c $ and $L$ be positive integers. Following the results of \n O. J. Rødseth\en [J. Reine Angew. Math. 301 (1978), 171--178; MR0557016 (58 #27741)] the author gives an algorithm using only $O(\log a)$ steps to generate a nonnegative solution of the linear Diophantine equation $ax+by+cz=L$. Applying this algorithm the author provides us with another algorithm, requiring $O(\log a)$ steps as well, to solve the Frobenius problem with three variables, i.e., to determine the number $\max\{L\in\mathbb{Z} \ | \ \nexists (x,y,z)\in \mathbb{Z}_+^3,\ ax+by+cz=L\}$ assuming that $\operatorname{gcd}(a,b,c)=1$. (Mathscinet review by Béla Vizvári)

I couldn't myself get my hands on a copy of this paper. The same holds for a 1994 J. Number Theory paper of J.L. Davison, which also gives a quadratic algorithm for computing the Frobenius number in the case of $3$ weights.

The most relevant publically available thing I could find (which seems pretty relevant, although I didn't look to see exactly what they say about the $n = 3$ case as opposed to the general case) is a 2005 paper of Beihoffer, Hendry, Nijenhuis and Wagon published in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics:

http://www.combinatorics.org/Volume_12/Abstracts/v12i1r27.html

Pete L. Clark
  • 65.4k
  • 12
  • 241
  • 381