A diagram showing the relevant complexity classes in the P vs NP problem. “P” problems are solvable in polynomial time; “NP” problems might be solvable in polynomial time, and are checkable in ...

Has the biggest question in computer science been solved? On 6 August, Vinay Deolalikar, a mathematician at Hewlett-Packard Labs in Palo Alto, California, sent out draft copies of a paper titled ...

When computer scientists hang out at cocktail parties, they're apt to chat, among other things, about the single most important unsolved problem in computer science: the question, Does P = NP?

"The P-NP problem is the most important open problem in computer science, if not all of mathematics. Simply stated, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly checked by computer can ...

On August 6, 2010, a computer scientist named Vinay Deolalikar published a paper with a name as concise as it was audacious: “P ≠ NP.” If Deolalikar was right, he had cut one of mathematics’ most ...

A solution to P vs NP could unlock countless computational problems—or keep them forever out of reach. 1. On Monday, July 19, 2021, in the middle of another strange pandemic summer, a leading computer ...