Highly Parallel HPC: Ants vs Horses
Combing things in parallel often has unexpected consequences and outcomes.
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Outside of geometry, the word parallel takes on many meanings. The term is often used to indicate “two or more things used in the same way at the same time.” I remember my first experience with circuit analysis. We learned that total resistance for resistors in series is a simple sum of the individual resistances (RT=R1+R2…), but resistors in parallel did not work that way. The formula for the total resistance was a sum of the reciprocals of all individual resistances (1/RT=1/R1+1/R2…) and was always less than the smallest resistor in the circuit. At first it seemed odd. You introduced more resistors but got less resistance. Working the numbers shows why, but at first blush it really did not make sense.
The parallel resistor lesson was the first of many “it is not what you would think” experiences. In general, putting things together in parallel often leads to non-intuitive results….
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