Question

First, write down a list of the daily activities that you typically do on a weekday. For instance, you might get out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, dry your hair, and brush your teeth. Make sure to break down your list so you have a minimum of 10 activities.

6.1.1 Now consider which of these activities is already exploiting some form of parallelism (e.g., brushing multiple teeth at the same time, versus one at a time, carrying one book at a time to school, versus loading them all into your backpack and then carry them “in parallel”). For each of your activities, discuss if they are already working in parallel, but if not, why they are not.

6.1.2 Next, consider which of the activities could be carried out concurrently (e.g., eating breakfast and listening to the news ). For each of your activities, describe which other activity could be paired with this activity.

6.1.3 For 6.1.2, what could we change about current systems (e.g., showers, clothes, TVs, cars) so that we could perform more tasks in parallel?

6.1.4 Estimate how much shorter time it would take to carry out these activities if you tried to carry out as many tasks in parallel as possible.

Short answer

10 activities:

• Brushing teeth
• Meditate
• Take a shower
• Hearing songs
• Get dressed
• Eating Breakfast
• Getting ready for work
• Packing Lunch bag
• Read Newspaper
• Getting into a cab
• Reaching office

6.1.1

Brushing teeth-parallel

Meditate- Not parallel

Take a shower- Not parallel

Hearing songs-not parallel

Get dressed- Parallel

Eating breakfast-parallel

Getting ready for work-not parallel

Packing Lunch bag-not parallel

Reading newspaper- not parallel

Getting into cab- not parallel

Reaching office-not parallel

6.1.2

Meditation – hearing songs can be done concurrently

Eating breakfast and hearing songs can be concurrent

Getting dressed and getting ready for work can be done concurrently

Getting a cab and hearing songs can be done concurrently

Getting ready for work and packing a lunch bag can be done in.

Hearing songs in the cab will make it parallel.

Reading the newspaper in the cab will be concurrent.

6.1.3

An audio system will be added to the cab

Newspaper can be taken into the cab.

Eating multiple breakfast varieties.

6.1.4

Brushing teeth is parallel, considering it takes 2 secs to brush each tooth, whereas brushing it all together takes only 30 secs to brush.

Getting dressed by yourself will take around 5 minutes when someone helps, then it takes around 2 minutes only.

Eating breakfast, for example eating toast and jam separately will take around

10 minutes, but eating toast and jam together will make it in 5 minutes.

Step-by-step solution

Determine parallelism and the concurrency

Parallelism will run parts of tasks at the same time using the multi-core infrastructure. Concurrency will execute two tasks virtually at the same time.

Concurrency can be done in a single processing unit whereas parallelism requires multiple processing units. Concurrency will increase the work done whereas parallelism improves the throughput and computational speed.

Determine a minimum of 10 activities

10 activities:

• Brushing teeth
• Meditate
• Take a shower
• Hearing songs
• Get dressed
• Eating Breakfast
• Getting ready for work
• Packing Lunch bag
• Read Newspaper
• Getting into a cab
• Reaching office

These are the 10 activities that will be considered for the following questions.

Determine a minimum of 10 activities with and without parallelism.

6.1.1

Brushing teeth-It is parallel because multiple teeth will be brushed at a time.

Meditate- It is Not parallel because it cannot be done in multiple types.

Take a shower- Not parallel because it is serial work.

Hearing songs-not parallel because songs playing on multiple audio devices is not negligible.

Get dressed- Parallel because dressing can be aided by the other person.

Eating breakfast is parallel because multiple foods can be eaten together at a time.

Packing Lunch bag- parallel because packing all the lunch boxes together in a bag.

The below activities are not parallel because they are serial activities.

Getting ready for work-not parallel

Reading newspaper- not parallel

Getting into cab- not parallel

Reaching office-not parallel

Determine concurrent activities.

6.1.2

Meditation – hearing songs can be done concurrently

Eating breakfast and hearing songs can be concurrent

Hearing songs and getting ready for work can be done concurrently

Getting a cab and hearing songs can be done concurrently

Getting ready for work and packing a lunch bag can be done in.

Hearing songs in the cab will make it parallel.

Reading the newspaper in the cab will be concurrent.

Determine the changes to be made to achieve parallelism.

6.1.3

An audio system will be added to the cab

Newspaper can be taken into the cab.

Eating multiple breakfast varieties.

Determine the time achieved by parallelism.

6.1.4

Brushing teeth is parallel, considering it takes 2 secs to brush each tooth, whereas brushing it all together takes only 30 secs to brush.

Getting dressed by yourself will take around 5 minutes. when someone helps, then it takes around 2 minutes only.

Eating breakfast, for example eating toast and jam separately will take around

10 minutes, but eating toast and jam together will make it in 5 minutes.