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Started by Gary Delp
Tue, 22 Sep 1987 12:25
Re: Amdahl's Law
Author: Gary Delp
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1987 12:25
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1987 12:25
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2180 bytes
in article <11370002@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>, swh@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Steve Harrold) says: > If there is some dispute as to how accurate Amdahl's "Law" is, shouldn't > it be more properly labelled "Amdahl's Theorem"?? Indeed, what people have said is that the world of parallel processing isn't as bad as Amdahl's Law might first make it seem, not that the "law" is not true. They have said that the serial portion of code can be minimized and separate tasks may be run in parallel. But, no one has given an example of where the *law* (like the *law* of gravity, an observation which fits all the observed data and predicts nature (also like the law of gravity, arbitrarily complex depending on what factors must be considered, but simple in the generally used cases.)) has been shown to be wrong. The law, simply stated, says that if you need to do something, and that thing has some elements which depend on their happening in a certain order, then it doesn't matter how many widgets there are to do that thing, the speed with which it can be done is limited by the serial execution speed of the things that must be done in series. BTW, the reference that eugene miya graciously provided (thanks eugene) only vaguely refered to this law. Is it possible that there are more recent references? Has anyone heard him talk and refer to this law? Any information would be helpful. -- Gary Delp ARPA: delp@udel.edu CSNET: delp%udel.edu@relay.cs.net 123 Hall, EE U of D ...!ihnp4!berkeley -\ Newark, DE 19716 UUCP: ...!allegra!berkeley -->!delp@udel.edu (302)-451-6653 or 2405 ...!harvard -/
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