Implementation

It is important that these commands themselves execute in parallel. In interactive use, it is common to expect a command to complete in a second or less. The parallel version of the same command should not take much longer. This requires that the commands be executed in parallel.

A simple way to arrange for parallel execution is to use recursive subdivision. Each node is given some number of processes to run a command on. It divides that list in half, and sends the upper half to the first processor in that half. This process continues until only one process is left. This takes 5#5 steps for p processes.

Note that all of these commands can execute faster if a server process is always running on each of the parallel processors. Such a server is not required however; the prototype implementation is written entirely in terms of shell scripts.