98: Shared steps use parallel resources to reduce elapsed time
Dave Nichols, 02/07/2003

This is a preliminary announcement for a new feature that will be available in build 21.1.42 when it's released.

The concept of a shared step has been introduced.

When a step is shared, the time associated with non-shared resources in the step will shrink to fit the elapsed time achieved by the shared resources. The shared resources will be used in parallel where available with each contributing to the overall time to reduce the elapsed time.

Example:

STEP (shared)
  RESOURCE Machine (not shared) RUN 1 minute per thing
  RESOURCE Person Group (shared) RUN 1 minute per thing

If Person Group has 3 members, all available, and the demand is for 900 things, then each member will be alocated 300 minutes in parallel and the Machine time will be shrunk to 300 minutes to fit. Thus the total elapsed time is 300 minutes. If only 2 members are available, each will be allocated 450 minutes. Etc. The time allocated to each member is independent of any other and just reflects their availability.

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