the field of arithmetic circuit complexity is undergoing major discoveries in recent years as mentioned by Fortnow. am looking for a more layman-readable summary:
is this new paper Sums of products of polynomials in few variables : lower bounds and polynomial identity testing / Kumar, Sarif essentially stating that a particular exponential lower bound on 2-depth arithmetic circuits ($\Sigma \Pi$) would imply VP$\neq$VNP?
(understood as cited by Fortnow the 4-depth case has been proved elsewhere by Kayal, Saha, Saptharishi.)
are the results proved in this paper or earlier papers? also if anyone knows of (introductory) textbook formulation(s) of this theory, most of which is contained in papers, please cite it.