Design considerations for adding parallel units

• Single processor

  • over-burdened - not enough remaining cycles to compute
  • raw performance - process just not powerful enough
  • timing/complexity - communication/computation difficult in sw

• System complexity

  • increase: more chips usually means more complicated/expensive
  • decrease: abstractions simplify design

• Power

  • increase
    • more chips/wires possibly more power
  • decrease
    • high performance chip vs. many low performance
    • “sleep” non-active components

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