multiple processors

[Rod]

Reading this article carefully, which I quote below
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...ice2007excelperf_ExcelPerformanceImprovements


"Most workbooks show a significant improvement in calculation speed on a
system with multiple cores. The degree of improvement depends on how many
independent calculation trees the workbook contains. If you make a workbook
that contains one continuous chain of formulas, it will not show any
multithreaded calculation (MTC) performance gain, whereas a workbook that
contains several independent chains of formulas will show gains close to the
number of processors available."


I get the impression that a spreadsheet which looked like this

Cell_1 = 2 + 3

Cell_2 = 4 + 5

Cell_3 = Cell_1 + Cell_2

would all be done in one thread whilst most of it could be spread over two.

Anyone know if this is the case?

many thanks

Rod

 

[joel]

Cell_1 = 2 + 3

Cell_2 = 4 + 5

Cell_3 = Cell_1 + Cell_2


I would think that Cell_1 and Cell_2 are two independant threads an
can be performed in parallel. Cell_3 isn't independant since it relie
on two seperate calcualtion threads and has to wait for both threads to
finish before it can be calculated.