Profit-effective parallel computing 

Y. Yan and X. Zhang     

IEEE Concurrency, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1999, pp. 65-69. 
 
Abstract
--------

Performance/cost ratio has been a commonly accepted metric 
for both customers and vendors to compare different parallel
computer systems. However, the performance/cost metric may 
not correctly reflect the profit gained by a parallel computer 
system, which is becoming a major interest to both customers and 
vendors. This paper studies limits of the performance/cost metric.
We propose a new metric for measuring profit-effectiveness
of parallel computing. We evaluate effects of performance, 
cost and production on the profit based on some performance and 
and pricing data provided by vendors.