Access

News and Views

Nature 435, 751-752 (9 June 2005) | doi:10.1038/435751a; Published online 8 June 2005

Computational science:  Can get satisfaction

Carla P. Gomes1 & Bart Selman1

Top

The sheer complexity of some computational problems means they will probably never be solved, despite the ever-increasing resources available. But we can sometimes predict under what conditions solutions exist.

Computer scientists have been quite successful at developing fast algorithms: Google, for example, searches its index of more than eight billion web pages in a fraction of a second. The indexed-search problem is said to be 'tractable', or efficiently solvable; it is even possible to guarantee that, no matter what keywords you search on, you will get an answer quickly.

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

Computational science A hard statistical view

Nature News and Views (07 Feb 2008)

Computing Solving problems in finite time

Nature News and Views (08 Jul 1999)