The simultaneous execution of multiple tasks or processes using multiple processors or cores, where operations literally happen at the same time. Unlike concurrency, parallelism requires actual simultaneous execution.
From Greek 'parallelos' meaning 'beside one another'. In computing, the term was adopted in the 1960s with the development of multi-processor systems that could literally execute instructions in parallel rather than just interleaving them.
Parallelism is like having multiple chefs in a kitchen each working on different dishes at exactly the same time, while concurrency is like one very fast chef switching between multiple dishes. True parallelism needs multiple 'chefs' (processors) working simultaneously!
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