With 23 programs queued to run on a quad core processor, any of which that can run on multiple cores, how many different assignments are there?

batystowy2b

batystowy2b

Answered question

2022-09-04

With 23 programs queued to run on a quad core processor, any of which that can run on multiple cores, how many different assignments are there?
There are 23 programs queued to run on a quad-core processor (processor with four cores). If each program can only be assigned to at most one core, and each core will have one program running on it, how many different combinations of programs can be run at the same time?
If any of the programs can be run on multiple cores at the same time, how many different assignments are there now?
My solution: For the first question, I got C(23,4) since out of 23 programs, only 4 programs will run at the same time and the order in which the programs are picked does not matter.
For the second question, however, I am unsure what the wording of this question is trying to point me towards. My thought process is that since each core will still have 1 program running on it at a given point in time and that any program can be run on multiple cores at the same time, then there is the possibility that the same program can be reused over multiple cores. Therefore, taking into account the number of program options over the four cores, the answer would have to be (23)(23)(23)(23). Is this how the problem should be done?

Answer & Explanation

Kimberly Evans

Kimberly Evans

Beginner2022-09-05Added 13 answers

Step 1
For each i = 1 , , 23, let x i be the number of cores that program i is running on. Notice that 0 x i 4 for all i. We want to know how many solutions there are to the equation
x 1 + x 2 + + x 23 = 4.
Step 2
In this case, the number of solutions is ( n + k 1 k 1 ) , where n = 4 and k = 23.

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