Computer Algorithms II Lecture Notes

9 October 2008 • Exhaustive Search in Practice

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To get an idea of how big 2×10³¹ is, suppose it were possible to execute the body of the while loop in 1 nanosecond. There are 10⁹ nanoseconds in a second, which means it would take

2×10³¹ values / 10⁹ values/sec = 2×10²² sec

to seach through all values (which is the worst case). There are roughly 31×10⁶ seconds in a year, giving

3×10²² sec / 31×10⁶ sec/year = 6.4×10¹⁴ years

to search through all the values. In comparison, the universe is believed to be between 10 and 20 billion years old.

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