Parallel computing

A mapping company is creating a program that can predict the traffic on routes and estimate the delay from the traffic. The program takes an input of 5 routes and outputs the delay for each route.

The program has two phases:

Setup: Loads historical traffic data for the geographic region.
Simulation: Predicts the traffic and estimates the delay of 5 routes.

The initial setup phase takes 10 minutes. The simulation phase takes 5 minutes per route, which amounts to 25 minutes total for the 5 routes. The program takes 35 minutes total.

The company would like to improve the program's efficiency by parallelizing the simulation operations.

What is true about the potential efficiency gains?

(Choice A)
Even if it's run on a powerful computer, a version with parallelized simulation operations would still take at least 15 minutes.
(Choice B)
Once the simulation operations are parallelized, the entire simulation phase will never take longer than 5 minutes.
(Choice C)
The version with parallelized simulation operations will always take less time than the sequential version, even if the company runs the software on a computer that cannot do parallel computing.
(Choice D)
A version with parallelized simulation operations could take a total time of less than 10 minutes (including setup and simulation).

AP®︎/College Computer Science Principles

Course: AP®︎/College Computer Science Principles > Unit 4

Problem