News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Two Workers Are Quadratically Better Than One. Parent comment

Re:Two Workers Are Quadratically Better Than One by btilly on Thursday November 05, 2020 @06:26PM (#25003240)
Isn't there the assumption in this article that tasks will come in faster than one person can deal with them, which of course leads to an exponential/snowball effect.

They are coming in at exactly the speed that one person can deal with them. Which means that in the long run the worker is always working, and lines can get arbitrarily long. That is what causes his "quadratic".

A second worker makes the odds of a long line drop dramatically.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Two Workers Are Quadratically Better Than One by baking on Thursday November 05, 2020 @06:46PM (#25003378)
I may be reading it wrong, but if there is a 50% chance that a worker can finish a task in one turn, two workers would help keep the backlog down to linear time. But I learned it from Alvin Drake in 6.041.
[ Parent | on HN ]