(kŏm'py-tā'shə-nəl) A mathematical characterization of the difficulty of a mathematical problem which describes the resources required by a computing machine to solve the problem. The mathematical study of such characterizations is called computational complexity theory and is important in many branches of theoretical computer science, especially cryptography.
computational complexity in Technology
algorithm The number of steps or arithmetic operations required to solve a computational problem. One of the three kinds of complexity. (1996-04-24)