Design and analysis of master/slave multiprocessors

A simple model of master/slave processors is presented, along with two simple, practical scheduling algorithms. An approximate analysis of the model yields simple formulas for performance measures in terms of the hardware and workload parameters, and gives insight into the power and the limitations of master/slave systems. In particular, formulae are obtained for the maximal processing power (throughput) of the system, a quantity that remains bounded as the number of slave processors increases. This analysis is applicable to symmetric multiprocessors, where performance considerations such as cache performance may dictate asymmetric assignment of system tasks to the processors