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 ...

What’s easy for a computer to do, and what’s almost impossible? Those questions form the core of computational complexity. We present a map of the landscape. How fundamentally difficult is a problem?

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 ...

When the Clay Mathematics Institute put individual $1-million prize bounties on seven unsolved mathematical problems, they may have undervalued one entry—by a lot. If mathematicians were to resolve, ...

In computational complexity theory, P and NP are two classes of problems. P is the class of decision problems that a deterministic Turing machine can solve in polynomial time. In useful terms, any ...

Last summer, three researchers took a small step toward answering one of the most important questions in theoretical computer science. To paraphrase Avi Wigderson of the Institute for Advanced Study, ...