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SOFSEM
2000
Springer

Exhaustive Search, Combinatorial Optimization and Enumeration: Exploring the Potential of Raw Computing Power

14 years 2 months ago
Exhaustive Search, Combinatorial Optimization and Enumeration: Exploring the Potential of Raw Computing Power
For half a century since computers came into existence, the goal of finding elegant and efficient algorithms to solve "simple" (welldefined and well-structured) problems has dominated algorithm design. Over the same time period, both processing and storage capacity of computers have increased by roughly a factor of a million. The next few decades may well give us a similar rate of growth in raw computing power, due to various factors such as continuing miniaturization, parallel and distributed computing. If a quantitative change of orders of magnitude leads to qualitative advances, where will the latter take place? Only empirical research can answer this question. Asymptotic complexity theory has emerged as a surprisingly effective tool for predicting run times of polynomial-time algorithms. For NPhard problems, on the other hand, it yields overly pessimistic bounds. It asserts the non-existence of algorithms that are efficient across an entire problem class, but ignores the ...
Jürg Nievergelt
Added 25 Aug 2010
Updated 25 Aug 2010
Type Conference
Year 2000
Where SOFSEM
Authors Jürg Nievergelt
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