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From: brooks@lll-crg.ARPA (Eugene D. Brooks III)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Re: I don't believe your statements abou
Message-ID: <579@lll-crg.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 10-May-85 21:25:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: lll-crg.579
Posted: Fri May 10 21:25:51 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 14-May-85 07:45:53 EDT
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Organization: Lawrence Livermore Labs, CRG group
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> 
> Has anybody ever claimed there was any advantage to multiprocessors other than 
> price or (at the high end) constructability?
The answer to this question is NO with one caviat.

There are those who would say that a multiprocessor with caches on each
processor is capable of superlinear performance.  This is because the total
amount of FAST memory in the system has increased and the result is a slight
increase in performance due to the larger cache volume.  The answer to this
it to compare the the parallel system to a uniprocessor with the same cache
volume.  A parallel processor with the same aggregate performance, all other
things equal, would never be preferrable to a uniprocessor unless your purpose
is to study parallel algorithm development.