Big Idea 4 · Topic 4.3 · Exercise 2
The Scheduling Consultant
25 minutes - 5 scenarios - classify, compute, defend
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Scenario 1 · Foundational
The yearbook app must export 400 finished pages. On one core, the export runs as a single 20-minute layout pass that must run alone, followed by four batches of 45 minutes each. A student claims the school's 4-core laptop will finish everything in 50 minutes flat ('200 minutes divided by 4 cores'). Rule on the claim.
Sign check - the model in play (sequential, parallel, distributed) and its giveaway:
Mechanism + defense - the arithmetic (times, speedup) or CED rule, and why the verdict holds:
Enrichment sub-type - ceiling, scaling, or distributed-wins (and why):
Scenario 2 · Core
A biology teacher's phone edits one video using all 8 cores of its chip at once. That evening, the same teacher's citizen-science app joins 2 million other phones overnight, all running one protein-folding program. The teacher calls both setups 'distributed computing.' Rule on the label.
Sign check - the model in play (sequential, parallel, distributed) and its giveaway:
Mechanism + defense - the arithmetic (times, speedup) or CED rule, and why the verdict holds:
Enrichment sub-type - ceiling, scaling, or distributed-wins (and why):
Scenario 3 · Core
A robotics team parallelized its vision code: it took 100 seconds sequentially and now takes 60 seconds. Three log entries disagree: one member wrote 'speedup = 40,' another wrote 'speedup about 1.67,' and a third predicted 'the speedup will double as soon as we double the cores.' Rule on all three entries.
Sign check - the model in play (sequential, parallel, distributed) and its giveaway:
Mechanism + defense - the arithmetic (times, speedup) or CED rule, and why the verdict holds:
Enrichment sub-type - ceiling, scaling, or distributed-wins (and why):
Scenario 4 · Challenge
A vendor pitches a game studio: 'Your build takes 30 seconds of setup that can't be split, then 60 seconds of compiling that splits perfectly across cores. Buy our 64-core box and your builds run 64 times faster.' Price the pitch honestly: what does the 64-core box actually deliver?
Sign check - the model in play (sequential, parallel, distributed) and its giveaway:
Mechanism + defense - the arithmetic (times, speedup) or CED rule, and why the verdict holds:
Enrichment sub-type - ceiling, scaling, or distributed-wins (and why):
Scenario 5 · Challenge
A genomics nonprofit holds 2 petabytes of DNA readings. No single computer it could ever buy will store the dataset, and the best single machine would need roughly 80 years to process it. The board is split between 'wait a few years for a bigger computer' and 'redesign the analysis to run across thousands of machines.' Advise the board.
Sign check - the model in play (sequential, parallel, distributed) and its giveaway:
Mechanism + defense - the arithmetic (times, speedup) or CED rule, and why the verdict holds:
Enrichment sub-type - ceiling, scaling, or distributed-wins (and why):
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