processor farm

A {parallel processor} where tasks are

distributed "farmed out" by one "farmer" processor to several

"worker" processors and results are sent back to the farmer.

This arrangement is suitable for {application}s which can be

partitioned into many separate, independant tasks, the

canonical examples being {ray tracing} and the {Mandelbrot

set}. In order to be efficient, the tasks need to be big

enough that the communications {overhead} is negligible.

(1995-03-16)