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NP-hard
(redirected from NP hard)

    Also found in: Wikipedia 0.09 sec.
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.
(complexity)NP-hard - 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 class NP in polynomial time.

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

See also computational complexity.



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