Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Balanced system - a tentative defin
Message-ID: <11857@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 15 Aug 88 19:44:15 GMT
References: <794@cernvax.UUCP> <28200188@urbsdc>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 28

In article <28200188@urbsdc> aglew@urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM writes:
| 
| >Someone a while ago asked what a "balanced system" is.  I propose
| >the following definition for debate/flaming:
| >
| >"A balanced system is one where an improvement in the performance
| >of  any single part would not increase the overall performance of
| >the system, and where the degrading of any single part would  de-
| >crease the overall performance."
| >
| >        Hubert Matthews

| This sort of balanced=saturated system would mean that, to improve
| the performance of the system, I would have to improve the performance
| of all components simultaneously. That is an expensive thing to do.

  Sounds like a great definition to me. I suspect that what you mean is
"a system with equal bottlenecks in all portions, such that doubling the
performance of any one part will produce an equal improvement in
performance."

  A balanced system (matthews definition, not mine) is a very
*inexpensive* implementation, in that no part has unused capacity which
has added expense without adding performance.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me