NP-hard


NP-hard

[¦en¦pē ′härd] (computer science) Referring to problems at least as hard as or harder than any problem in NP. Given a method for solving an NP-hard problem, any problem in NP can be solved with only polynomially more work.

NP-hard

(complexity)A set or property of computational search problems. A problem is NP-hard if solving it in polynomial time would make it possible to solve all problems in classNP in polynomial time.

Some NP-hard problems are also in NP (these are called"NP-complete"), some are not. If you could reduce an NPproblem to an NP-hard problem and then solve it in polynomialtime, you could solve all NP problems.

See also computational complexity.