Christopher J. Cameron, Steve Lantz
Cornell Center for Advanced Computing

Revisions: 3/2022, 9/2014 (original)

This topic explains parallel programming concepts through a series of examples in which people work together to sort cards using various strategies.

Objectives

After you complete this topic, you should be able to:

  • Explain the two potential benefits of adding more workers
  • Reason about how sharing a resource impacts individual and collective productivity
  • Identify the extra costs imposed by parallel work designs
Prerequisites

Although not required, a basic understanding of serial (single-threaded) programming and some familiarity with computer terminology will help you use the material to develop some intuition about parallel computation.

 
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