Design and Analysis of Algorithms

As the speed of the processor increases, performance is frequently said to be less central than other software quality characteristics (e.g. security, extensibility, reusability, etc.). However, large problem sizes are commonplace in the area of computational science, which makes the performance a very important factor. This is because longer computation time, to name a few mean slower results, less thorough research, and higher cost of computation (if buying CPU Hours from an external party). The study of the Algorithm, therefore, gives us a language to express performance as a function of problem size.