What is scalability?
Open Access
- 2 December 1990
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News
- Vol. 18 (4) , 18-21
- https://doi.org/10.1145/121973.121975
Abstract
Scalability is a frequently-claimed attribute of multiprocessor systems. While the basic notion is intuitive, scalability has no generally-accepted definition. For this reason, current use of the term adds more to marketing potential than technical insight.In this paper, I first examine formal definitions of scalability, but I fail to lind a useful, rigorous definition of it . I then question whether scalability is useful and conclude by challenging the technical community to either (1) rigorously define scalability or (2) stop using it to describe systems.Keywords
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