What is np meaning?

In computer science, np stands for nondeterministic polynomial time. NP is a complexity class of decision problems that can be solved by a nondeterministic Turing machine in polynomial time. NP is a subset of the complexity class known as P, where P is the set of decision problems that can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine in polynomial time. The question of whether P equals NP is one of the most important open problems in computer science and mathematics. Many important computational problems, such as the traveling salesman problem and graph coloring, are known to be in NP. The development of efficient algorithms to solve NP problems has been a major area of research for decades and has practical applications in fields such as optimization, cryptography, and machine learning.