Talk:Embarrassingly parallel

Name origin

Why is it called embarrasingly? What's the reasoning behind the word use? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.25.246.40 (talk • contribs) 17:44, 23 June 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's started as a criticism on a particular problem that might have been used as a benchmark. This is just second-guessing tho. As massively parallel tasks are the easiest to parallelizize (by definition), it doesn't get much respect from anyone if you have a computer that's capable of doing that. 62.220.237.66 13:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because it refers to problems that are so easy to parallelize, that it would be very embarrassing if your parallel computing system failed to do so. Compare "embarrassingly obvious". --Piet Delport 18:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Game-tree search

I'm not sure I agree that game-tree search in artificial intelligence is in general (or even frequently) embarassingly parallel; while minimax is, alpha-beta is definitely not. --Kenta2 12:30, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. Only the simplest implementations are. Any technique which uses gathered knowledge to search more effectively presets parallelistation problems. (Alpha-beta is an example). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.193.175.91 (talk • contribs) 10:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Pleasingly Parallel

I've also seen a growing use of the alternative term "pleasingly parallel", as a euphemism for this term, since "embarrassingly" can have negative connotations. -- Bovineone 17:59, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Counter Examples

I believe this term is also used to describe cloud computing, as in, cloud computing is useful to solve embarassingly parallel problems like millions of users requesting search. But it would be helpful here to have some counter examples...what are examples of parallel computing at the other end of the spectrum from this?

bobheuman 9:00, 23 Jun 2008(UTC)

Disconcertingly serial

The phrase "disconcertingly serial" has three matches on Google, none of which are relevant. This should not be included as if it were standard terminology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.238.28.39 (talk) 11:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Two or more types of embarrasing parallelism?

Is there any mention in the literature for two or more types of embarrasing parallelism? I ask because although calculation of say... the Mandelbrot appears perfectly suited to the task, there is the factor that some pixels take many more times longer to calculate than other pixels. We're talking not just an offset of time, but a multiple.

I wonder if ray traced pixels suffer from a similar problem.--Skytopia (talk) 20:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a common issue in "pleasantly" parallel computing and is related to the halting problem.

How are simulation problems embarrassingly parallel?

Just wondering.