Let us now focus on the computation of the inverse chirp transform. The idea is to use the Newton basis for intermediate computations: first perform a Newton interpolation, then perform a conversion from the Newton basis to the monomial basis. Both steps have complexities M(n) + O(n), which gives the estimate of 2M(n) + O(n)
The function M(n)
denotes the cost of multiplying univariate polynomials of degree less than n. Using FFT-based multiplication algorithms, M(n) can be taken in O(n log(n) log(log(n)))
So they did not reach O(n log n).
* log₂ log₂ 2⁶⁴ = 6, which is essentially a constant factor if N<2⁶⁴
* to be fair, you may need to consider (log log N), or even (log log N)² factors hidden in native computer word size if exceeding N = 2⁶⁴.
* Today's machines have gone far from the classical computational complexity models, where data access patterns and locality matter orders of magnitude more than a factor which is essentially <= 6.
I would not immediately discard a (log log n) factor, but for nearly all purposes, I would mostly disregard it. So if the only difference were O(n·log n) vs O(n·log n·log log n), then no, it would not be a big deal.
Also in this more compact paper by Bostan and Schost: https://specfun.inria.fr/bostan/publications/BoSc05.pdf
The new algorithm may be a different way to do it (I haven't studied the paper), but the authors ought to have cited previous work. Where does Nature find their referees?