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In theoretical computer science, a nondeterministic Turing machine (NTM) is a theoretical model of computation whose governing rules specify more than one possible action when in some given situations. That is, an NTM's next state is not completely determined by its action and the current symbol it sees, unlike a deterministic Turing machine.
Turing equivalence Many machines that might be thought to have more computational capability than a simple universal Turing machine can be shown to have no more power. [ 1 ] They might compute faster, perhaps, or use less memory, or their instruction set might be smaller, but they cannot compute more powerfully (i.e. more mathematical functions).
This means that there is a non-deterministic machine which, for a given input of size n, will run in time O(f(n)) (i.e. within a constant multiple of f(n), for n greater than some value), and will always "reject" the input if the answer to the decision problem is "no" for that input, while if the answer is "yes" the machine will "accept" that input for at least one computation path.
NP is the set of decision problems solvable in polynomial time by a nondeterministic Turing machine. NP is the set of decision problems verifiable in polynomial time by a deterministic Turing machine. The first definition is the basis for the abbreviation NP; "nondeterministic, polynomial time". These two definitions are equivalent because the ...
Common equivalent models are the multi-tape Turing machine, multi-track Turing machine, machines with input and output, and the non-deterministic Turing machine (NDTM) as opposed to the deterministic Turing machine (DTM) for which the action table has at most one entry for each combination of symbol and state.
However, the time hierarchy theorems provide no means to relate deterministic and non-deterministic complexity, or time and space complexity, so they cast no light on the great unsolved questions of computational complexity theory: whether P and NP, NP and PSPACE, PSPACE and EXPTIME, or EXPTIME and NEXPTIME are equal or not.
In computational complexity theory, an alternating Turing machine (ATM) is a non-deterministic Turing machine (NTM) with a rule for accepting computations that generalizes the rules used in the definition of the complexity classes NP and co-NP.
In the theory of computation and automata theory, the powerset construction or subset construction is a standard method for converting a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) into a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) which recognizes the same formal language. It is important in theory because it establishes that NFAs, despite their ...