# Compute-bound

A workload whose runtime is limited by how fast calculations can be performed. Adding workers to a compute-bound job generally makes it finish sooner.

Source: https://university.eugo.io/glossary/compute-bound

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This is the regime distribution helps most: the work is genuinely arithmetic, so adding workers adds throughput almost linearly until partitioning or scheduling overhead becomes the limit.

## Related terms

- [I/O-bound](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/io-bound) — A workload whose runtime is limited by reading and writing data rather than by calculation. Adding workers to an I/O-bound job adds waiting, not throughput.
- [Profiling](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/profiling) — Measuring where a program actually spends its time, before deciding what to optimize.
- [Speedup](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/speedup) — How many times faster a distributed run is than the same work on one worker. Ideal speedup equals worker count; real speedup falls short of it.