P = FS: Parallel is Just Fast Serial

Abstract

We prove that parallel processing with homogeneous processors is logically equivalent to fast serial processing. The reverse proposition can also be used to identify obscure opportunities for applying parallelism. To our knowledge, this theorem has not been previously reported in the queueing theory literature. A plausible explanation is offered for why this might be. The basic homogeneous theorem is also extended to optimizing the latency of heterogenous parallel arrays.