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Speedup Anomalies

Sometimes superlinear speedups can be observed!

• Memory/cache effects
  • More processors typically also provide more memory/cache.
  • Total computation time decreases due to more page/cache hits.
• Search anomalies
  • Parallel search algorithms.
  • Decomposition of search range and/or multiple search strategies.
  • One task may be "lucky" to find result early.

Both "advantages" can "in principle" be also achieved on uniprocessors.