TASK FARMING

TASK FARMING (n.) A technique for implementing self-scheduling calculations. In a task farm, a source process generates a pool of jobs, while a sink process consumes results. In between, one or more worker processes repeatedly claim jobs from the source, turn them into results, dispatch those results to the sink, and claim their next jobs. If the number of jobs is much greater than the number of workers, task farming can be an effective way to load balance a computation.