Multiboxing Wiki - Multicpu, Multigpu, Multiharddrive, Multimonitor, etc and Bounded Issues. Revision 3. Work in Progress.

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2. List of Terms and References:
What is bounded? Bound (Using CPU Bounded also applies to other bounding issues.) as defined by wikipedia.org:

In computer science, CPU bound (or compute bound) is when the time for a computer to complete a task is determined principally by the speed of the central processor: processor utilization is high, perhaps at 100% usage for many seconds or minutes. Interrupts generated by peripherals may be processed slowly, or indefinitely delayed.

The concept of CPU bound was developed during early computers, when data paths between computer components were simpler, and it was possible to visually see one component working while another was idle. Examples components were CPU, tape drives, hard disks, card-readers, and printers. Computers that predominantly used peripherals were characterized as I/O bound. Establishing that a computer is frequently CPU bound implies that upgrading the CPU or optimizing code will improve the overall computer performance.

With the advent of multiple busses, parallel processing, multiprogramming, preemptive scheduling, advanced graphics cards, advanced sound cards and generally, more decentralized loads, it became less likely to identify one particular component as always being a bottleneck. It is likely that a computer's bottleneck shifts rapidly between components. Furthermore, in modern computers it is possible to have 100% CPU utilization with minimal impact to another component. Finally, tasks required of modern computers often emphasize quite different components, so that resolving bottleneck for one task may not affect the performance of another. For these reasons, upgrading a CPU does not always have a dramatic effect. The concept of being CPU bound is now one of many factors considered in modern computer performance.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_bound

What is Amadal's Law? Amadal's Law as defined by wikipedia.org:

Amdahl's law is a model for the relationship between the expected speedup of parallelized implementations of an algorithm relative to the serial algorithm, under the assumption that the problem size remains the same when parallelized. For example, if for a given problem size a parallelized implementation of an algorithm can run 12% of the algorithm's operations arbitrarily fast (while the remaining 88% of the operations are not parallelizable), Amdahl's law states that the maximum speedup of the parallelized version is 1/(1 - 0.12) = 1.136 times faster than the non-parallelized implementation.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

What are nodes? Node as defined by wikipedia.org:

A node In the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a computational resource upon which UML artifacts may be deployed for execution. [1]
There are two types of nodes: device nodes and execution environments.
1) A device represent hardware devices: a physical computational resource with processing capability upon which UML artifacts may be deployed for execution. Devices may be complex (i.e., they may consist of other devices).[1]
2) An execution environments represent software containers (such as operating systems, JVM, servlet/EJB containers, application servers, portal servers etc.) This is a node that offers an execution environment for specific types of components that are deployed on it in the form of deployable artifacts.[1]

Execution environments can be nested. Nodes can be interconnected through communication paths to define network structures. A communication path is an "association between two Deployment Targets, through which they are able to exchange signals and messages".[1]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node_(UML)

In the case of this guide, nodes are defined computational units that have their own memory (generic term) or workspace which is only accessible to that computational unit (in a very generic and abstract sense). Node areas are defined below as:
CPU Node: As in this case, the Opteron is a good example of a computing node with it's own memory space. For the Core 2, we are going to stretch the example to include the motherboard.
GPU Node: Another good example, where the graphic cores have their own memory space.
PPU Node: Since I don't own a Ageis PhysX card and they were later on bought out by Nvidia, we are going to use a generic example. No matter where the physics code is running on we are going to assume it has it's own memory space, whether it be physical (i.e. Ageis PhysX) or virtual (i.e. Nvidia PhysX on the GPU or Havoc on the CPU).
AIPU Node: No known physical implementation, however like the above we are going to assume a generic example (i.e. AI code on the CPU).
APU Node: Certain sound cards have it's own memory space (i.e. Creative Labs' X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro Series or higher).
NPU Node: Certain network cards have it's own memory space too (i.e. KillerNIC).
MMI Node: That's pretty much the user.

What are interfaces? Interface as defined by wikipedia.org:

Interface generally refers to an abstraction that an entity provides of itself to the outside. This separates the methods of external communication from internal operation, and allows it to be internally modified without affecting the way outside entities interact with it, as well as provide multiple abstractions of itself. It may also provide a means of translation between entities which do not speak the same language, such as between a human and a computer. Because interfaces are a form of indirection, some additional overhead is incurred versus direct communication.

The interface between a human and a computer is called a user interface. Interfaces between hardware components are physical interfaces. This article deals with software interfaces, which exist between separate software components and provide a programmatic mechanism by which these components can communicate.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(computer_science)

Interface areas are defined below as:
User Interface
Physical (Hardware) Interface
Software Interface

References used through the Guide?
1) World of Warcraft Hardware Guide:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2381
2) World of Warcraft - Burning Crusade, Hardware Guide:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6164252/index.html
3) World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King, Hardware Guide:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6202200/index.html?tag=feature;sidenav