CPU-bound
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Incomputer science,atask,joborprocessis said to beCPU-bound(orcompute-bound) when the time it takes for it to complete is determined principally by the speed of thecentral processor.The term can also refer to the condition acomputerrunning such a workload is in, in which its processor utilization is high, perhaps at 100% usage for many seconds or minutes, andinterruptsgenerated byperipheralsmay be processed slowly or be indefinitely delayed.[citation needed]
As applied to jobs
[edit]CPU-bound jobs will spend most of theirexecution timeon actual computation ( "number crunching"[1]) as opposed to e.g. communicating with and waiting for peripherals such asnetworkorstorage devices(which would make themI/O boundinstead). Such jobs can often benefit fromparallelizationtechniques such asmultithreadingif the underlyingalgorithmis amenable to it, allowing them to distribute their workload among multipleCPU coresand be limited by its multi-core rather than single-core performance.
As applied to computers
[edit]The concept of CPU-bounding was developed during early computers, when data paths between computer components were simpler, and it was possible to visually see one component working while another was idle. Example components were CPU, tape drives, hard disks, card-readers, and printers. Computers that predominantly used peripherals were characterized asI/O bound.Establishing that a computer is frequently CPU-bound implies that upgrading the CPU or optimizing code will improve the overall computer performance.
With the advent of multiple buses, parallel processing,multiprogramming,preemptivescheduling, advancedgraphics cards,advancedsound cardsand generally, more decentralized loads, it became less likely to identify one particular component as always being abottleneck.It is likely that a computer's bottleneck shifts rapidly between components. Furthermore, in modern computers it is possible to have 100% CPU utilization with minimal impact to another component. Finally, tasks required of modern computers often emphasize quite different components, so that resolving a bottleneck for one task may not affect the performance of another. For these reasons, upgrading a CPU does not always have a dramatic effect. The concept of being CPU-bound is now one of many factors considered in modern computing performance.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Gill, P.S. (2006).Operating Systems Concepts.Firewall Media. p. 83.ISBN978-81-7008-913-1.Retrieved2023-07-06.