processor farm

computer, parallel A parallel processor where tasks are

distributed, or "farmed out", by one "farmer" processor to

several "worker" processors, and results are sent back to the

farmer. This arrangement is suitable for applications which

can be partitioned into many separate, independent tasks, the

canonical examples being ray tracing and the Mandelbrotset. In order to be efficient, the extra time spent on

communications must be small compared to the time spent

processing each task.

(2001-05-28)