---
title: Amdahl's Law Limits Parallel Speedup
date: 2025-09-27T00:00:00
author: Charlie M.
category: SIGNAL
---
So, I was sitting on my couch this morning, sunlight streaming in through the window, just lost in my own head. You know how it is. Scrolling through Instagram, half-thinking about how I really should clean my room or maybe go for a run, but instead, I'm deep in this rabbit hole of posts about fitness routines and productivity hacks. It's like every swipe is a little reminder of what I'm not doing. But then, somehow, I ended up thinking about computers. Weird, right? How my brain connects these dots, I have no idea. Anyway, this thing called Amdahl’s Law popped into my head, and I couldn't shake it.
I remember hearing about it in some lecture back in college, but honestly, the details are kind of fuzzy. Something about how no matter how many processors you throw at a problem, you're still stuck with some part of it that just won’t get faster. It's like this speed limit on parallel processing. I bet it's like those fitness apps that claim you'll get results faster, but you’re still stuck doing the same old squats and push-ups. Maybe there’s a parallel there. Or maybe not. I don’t know.
This law—Amdahl’s—it's about how only parts of a task can be sped up with more resources. Like, even if 90% of a task is made faster with more processors, the remaining 10% that isn't parallelized just bottlenecks the whole thing. And you know what? I feel like that's my life. Everything I try to do quicker or better, there's always some part of it that just drags. Like cleaning my room, for instance. I can pick up clothes and dust things quickly enough, but organizing my desk? Total time-suck.
Anyway, I think the law goes something like this: the speedup of a task with parallel processing is limited by the time needed for the sequential portion. I probably should look it up, but you know how it is. Too many Wikipedia tabs open and not enough brain power to read them all at once. There was this study—can't remember who did it—about how people overestimate their multitasking abilities. Maybe that's connected, or maybe it's just another thing for me to worry about when I'm pretending to be productive.
But then I wonder, what if I'm missing something? Like, what if there's a way to trick Amdahl’s Law? I mean, people are smart, right? I’ve tried all these productivity apps that claim to maximize efficiency. Deleting and redownloading them as if this time it'll be different. But life just doesn’t get faster no matter how many hacks I try. There's always that bit that stays stubbornly slow, like the sequenced part of a task that just can’t be parallelized.
So, I guess I'm left here, sitting on my couch, sunlight fading out of the room, still thinking about Amdahl's Law and how it reflects my life more than I like to admit. I don’t have any neat conclusions, just a mess of thoughts about speed and limits and how technology doesn’t always have the answers. Maybe tomorrow I’ll clean my room or actually read up on the law. Maybe I won’t. Anyway, life goes on in its own slow, unpredictable way.