<computer, parallel> 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 applications 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.
(16 Mar 1995)