can multi-core improve single funciton?

[Chris Rebert]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 8:57 PM, James Mills
<prologic at shortcircuit.net.au> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:21 PM, oyster <lepto.python at gmail.com> wrote:
>> My real purpose is to know "whether multi-core can help to improve the
>> speed of a common function". But I know definitely that the answer is
>> NO.
>
> As stated by others, and even myself,
> it is not possible to just "automagically"
> improve the execution speed of a single
> function - let alone an application.
>
> Your problem must be capable of being divided up
> into work units that can be parallelized. If this is not
> possible, multiple cores (no matter how many you have)
> -will not- help you.

See also Amdahl's Law -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

Cheers,
Chris

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