Analogies break down or.. is this actually within the analogy? Some buses, they permit small variances from the set route to deal with specific issues which can be done en-route.

The simplest is "drop me off anywhere on the route, but only pick up on demand at scheduled stops"

The more complex is "wear one diversion every now and then"

Some small buses actually self-optimize to a locally efficient route. Post-Buses in rural locations.

It is surely possible GPU can segment, into small disjoint sets of "like" and so continue to offer parallelism, but at reduced intensity? Or, have point inefficiencies in the computation, toward the overall goal of "all alike"