Computational resource

In computational complexity theory, a computational resource is a resource used by some computational model in the solution of computational problems. The simplest computational resources are computation time, the number of steps necessary to solve a problem, and memory space, the amount of storage needed while solving the problem, but many more complicated resources have been defined.

A computational problem is generally defined in terms of its action on any valid input; examples of problems might be "given an integer n, determine whether n is prime", or "given two numbers x and y, calculate the product x*y". As the inputs get bigger, the amount of computational resources needed to solve a problem will increase. Thus, the resources needed to solve a problem are described in terms of asymptotic analysis.