  We introduce the notion of a robust parameterized arithmetic circuit for the
evaluation of algebraic families of multivariate polynomials. Based on this
notion, we present a computation model, adapted to Scientific Computing, which
captures all known branching parsimonious symbolic algorithms in effective
Algebraic Geometry. We justify this model by arguments from Software
Engineering. Finally we exhibit a class of simple elimination problems of
effective Algebraic Geometry which require exponential time to be solved by
branching parsimonious algorithms of our computation model.
