Pipelining is defined as follows:
A pipeline is a set of data processing elements connected in series, so that the output of one element is the input of the next one.The following gives a laundry analogy for pipelining. Ann, Brian, Cathy, and Don each have dirty clothes to be washed, dried, and folded where
| Figure | Description |
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Wash dirty load of clothes. |
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Dry wet clothes. |
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Fold and put clothes into drawers. |
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Each stage takes 30 minutes to complete and four loads of clothes are to wash, dry, and fold. |
| The washer, dryer, and “folder” each takes 30 minutes for its task. Therefore, the sequential laundry takes 6 hours for 4 loads. |
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| Intuitively, we can use pipelining to speed up laundry. The pipelined laundry takes just 3 hours for 4 loads. Speedup factor is 2 for 4 loads. We show the pipeline stage of different loads over time by showing copies of the four resources on this two-dimensional timeline, but we really have just one of each resource. |
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