Computer Dictionary of Information Technology

processor farm

A parallel processor where tasks are distributed, or "farmed out", by one "farmer" processor to several "worker" processors, and results are sent back to the farmer. This arrangement is suitable for applications which can be partitioned into many separate, independent tasks, the canonical examples being ray tracing and the Mandelbrot set. In order to be efficient, the extra time spent on communications must be small compared to the time spent processing each task.