AMDAHL’S LAW

Each time a (particular) microprocessor company announces its

latest and greatest CPU, headlines sprout across the globe heralding this
latest leap forward in technology. Cyberphiles the world over would agree that
such advances are laudable and deserving of fanfare. However, when similar
advances are made in I/O technology, the story is apt to appear on page 67 of some
obscure trade magazine. Under the blare of media hype, it is easy to lose
sight of the integrated nature of computer systems. A 40% speedup for one
component certainly will not make the entire system 40% faster, despite media
implications to the contrary.
In 1967, George Amdahl recognized the interrelationship of all
components with the overall efficiency of a computer system. He quantified his
observations in a formula, which is now known as Amdahl’s Law. In essence,
Amdahl’s Law states that the overall speedup of a computer system depends on
both the speedup in a particular component and how much that component is used
by the system. In symbols:

where

S is the speedup;
f is the fraction of work performed by the faster component; and
k is the speedup of a new component.

Let’s say that most of your daytime processes spend 70% of their time
running in the CPU and 30% waiting for service from the disk. Suppose also that
someone is trying to sell you a processor array upgrade that is 50% faster than
what you have and costs $10,000. The day before, someone had called you on the
phone offering you a set of disk drives for $7,000. These new disks promise two and
a half times the throughput of your existing disks. You know that the system
performance is starting to degrade, so you need to do something. Which would you
choose to yield the best performance improvement for the least amount of money?
For the processor option we have:

We therefore appreciate a total speedup of 130% with the new processor for
$10,000.
For the disk option we have:

The disk upgrade gives us a speedup of 122% for $7,000.

All things being equal, it is a close decision. Each 1% of performance improvements
resulting from the processor upgrade costs about $333. Each 1% with the disk
upgrades costs about $318. This makes the disk upgrade a slightly better choice,
based solely upon dollars spent per performance improvement percentage point.
Certainly, other factors would influence your decision. For example, if your disks are
nearing the end of their expected life, or if you’re running out of disk space, you
might consider the disk upgrade even if it were to cost more than the processor
upgrade.
Before you make that disk decision, however, you need to know your
options. The sections that follow will help you to gain an understanding of general
I/O architecture, with special emphasis on disk I/O. Disk I/O follows closely behind
the CPU and memory in determining the overall effectiveness of a computer system.