A balanced machine needs roughly one bit of input-output per second and one byte of memory for each instruction per second.
Amdahl's other rule, from the mainframe era. Distinct from Amdahl's Law and less often cited, though it is the one that governs system procurement.
In practice
- A team buys the fastest available processors and leaves the disks and network untouched, then cannot explain why the batch job takes as long as before.
- A warehouse doubles its picking staff and keeps one loading bay; the trucks queue in the yard.
- Standing
- Distinct from Amdahl's Law, which concerns limits to parallel speedup.
- Subject
- Technology & Software
- Essay
- Design rules that engineers pass down