Divide-and-Conquer Models

In the divide-and-conquer (sometimes called simultaneous computation or work crew) model, one or more entities perform the same tasks in parallel. There is no master entity; all entities run in parallel independently.

An example of a divide-and-conquer model is a parallelized grep command implementation, which could be done as follows. The grep command first establishes a pool of files to be scanned. It then creates a number of entities. Each entity takes a different file from the pool and searches for the pattern, sending the results to a common output device. When an entity completes its file search, it obtains another file from the pool or stops if the pool is empty.