3 ms·
It would mean that a large class of problems that have solutions that can be verified quickly can be solved quickly. Which cuts both ways. While that means mos
by kingaillas 5y ago
It would mean that a large class of problems that have solutions that can be verified quickly can be solved quickly. Which cuts both ways.
While that means most protocols used for cryptography would need to be replaced (hashing, digital signatures, etc) it also means other combinatorics algorithms (traveling salesman, protein structure prediction) would become solvable which may been boon for logistics and/or computational science.
(I think this is correct) If P=NP there will still be intractable problems; they would be ones where the solutions can't be verified in polynomial time... along the lines of verifying the solution is correct is as complicated as brute forcing the solution.
Note: it's been a while since my computation theory class. ;) I am reading over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem and relearning the fine house of cards theoreticians have divided this problem into. There is a "consequences of P=NP" towards the bottom that sums it up better than I can.
- xxpor 5y agoThere's also the chance that while we may be able to come up with a polynomial algorithm for integer factorization, it's not actually practical to run still. Remember computational complexity discards the constants on that polynomial. Practically speaking x^2 + x is a lot different from 2^64x^2 + 2^32x + 2^16 :)
- Dylan16807 5y ago'quickly' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. "A proof that P = NP could have stunning practical consequences if the proof leads to efficient methods for solving some of the important problems in NP." Note the "if". It is extremely important to the meaning. It's very possible for P to equal NP, but for that "if" to be false.