Gustafson's law
E783773
Gustafson's law is a principle in parallel computing that argues overall speedup can scale with the number of processors by increasing problem size, challenging the fixed-workload limitation implied by Amdahl's law.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Gustafson's law canonical | 1 |
| Gustafson–Barsis law | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T9143080 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Gustafson's law Context triple: [Amdahl's law, contrastedWith, Gustafson's law]
-
A.
Amdahl's law
Amdahl's law is a formula in computer architecture and parallel computing that predicts the maximum performance improvement achievable by parallelizing parts of a system, given that some portion must remain serial.
-
B.
Dennard scaling
Dennard scaling is a principle in microelectronics stating that as transistors shrink, their power density stays constant, allowing higher clock speeds and more transistors per chip without increasing overall power consumption.
-
C.
Moore's law
Moore's law is an observation and prediction that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit—and thus computing power—tends to roughly double at regular intervals, driving exponential growth in digital technology.
-
D.
BBN Butterfly parallel computer
The BBN Butterfly parallel computer was an early massively parallel processing system notable for its scalable architecture and use in advanced research and defense applications in the 1980s.
-
E.
Wirth’s law
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Gustafson's law Target entity description: Gustafson's law is a principle in parallel computing that argues overall speedup can scale with the number of processors by increasing problem size, challenging the fixed-workload limitation implied by Amdahl's law.
-
A.
Amdahl's law
Amdahl's law is a formula in computer architecture and parallel computing that predicts the maximum performance improvement achievable by parallelizing parts of a system, given that some portion must remain serial.
-
B.
Dennard scaling
Dennard scaling is a principle in microelectronics stating that as transistors shrink, their power density stays constant, allowing higher clock speeds and more transistors per chip without increasing overall power consumption.
-
C.
Moore's law
Moore's law is an observation and prediction that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit—and thus computing power—tends to roughly double at regular intervals, driving exponential growth in digital technology.
-
D.
BBN Butterfly parallel computer
The BBN Butterfly parallel computer was an early massively parallel processing system notable for its scalable architecture and use in advanced research and defense applications in the 1980s.
-
E.
Wirth’s law
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (40)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
performance model
ⓘ
principle in parallel computing ⓘ scaling law ⓘ |
| addresses |
scalability of parallel programs
ⓘ
speedup in parallel computing ⓘ |
| alsoKnownAs |
Gustafson–Barsis law
ⓘ
linked to:
Gustafson's law
|
| applicableTo |
distributed-memory systems
ⓘ
shared-memory multiprocessors ⓘ |
| argues | overall speedup can scale with number of processors ⓘ |
| assumes |
fixed execution time
ⓘ
increasing workload with processor count ⓘ problem size grows with processor count ⓘ scaled problem size ⓘ |
| category |
laws of computer science
ⓘ
parallel computing theory ⓘ |
| challenges | fixed-workload limitation of Amdahl's law ⓘ |
| contrastsWith | Amdahl's law ⓘ |
| defines |
N as number of processors
ⓘ
S(N) as scaled speedup ⓘ α as serial fraction of execution time ⓘ |
| emphasizes | practical workloads rather than fixed-size benchmarks ⓘ |
| field |
high-performance computing
ⓘ
parallel computing ⓘ |
| focusesOn | weak scaling ⓘ |
| implies |
large problems can use many processors efficiently
ⓘ
parallel fraction can dominate as processor count increases ⓘ |
| influenced |
design of large-scale scientific simulations
ⓘ
thinking about massively parallel processing ⓘ |
| motivatedBy | limitations of Amdahl's law for large-scale systems ⓘ |
| proposedBy | John L. Gustafson ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1988 ⓘ |
| publishedIn | Communications of the ACM ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
Amdahl's law
ⓘ
parallel speedup ⓘ strong scaling ⓘ weak scaling efficiency ⓘ |
| speedupFormula | S(N) = N − α (N − 1) ⓘ |
| usedFor |
designing scalable parallel algorithms
ⓘ
estimating parallel performance ⓘ evaluating supercomputer scalability ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Gustafson's law Description of subject: Gustafson's law is a principle in parallel computing that argues overall speedup can scale with the number of processors by increasing problem size, challenging the fixed-workload limitation implied by Amdahl's law.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: Gustafson's law