what is the best simplest definition of Bottleneck???

[waelh2001]

hi
i have several posts and threads about bottlenecking ....but can someone just simplify it to a simple definition so i get clear vision of it?
thanx in advnace

 

[dragonsprayer]

take alot of marbles and drop them in a funnel were the exit hole is slightly larger then the ball

o u mean computers! oops!

thats the place were data gets tied up - it could your memory if u have low amount or the cpu if its slow or even your hard drive

depends on many factors - its usually your memory

i.e. if you task manager shows your cpu is maxed when your running anti spy and virus then thats the bottle nect

 

[dragonsprayer]

simplest:

the place, thing or item that constricts flow of data, things or ideas!

 

[sirkillalot]

bot·tle·neck (bŏt'l-něk') Pronunciation Key
n.

A narrow or obstructed section, as of a highway or a pipeline.
A point or an area of traffic congestion.
A hindrance to progress or production.
The narrow part of a bottle near the top.
Music A style of guitar playing in which an object, such as a piece of glass or metal, is passed across the strings to achieve a gliding sound.
bot·tle·necked, bot·tle·neck·ing, bot·tle·necks
To slow down or impede by creating an obstruction.

 

[waelh2001]

ooooh what a huge responses i have got for this query.....i wanna thank everyone who participated in this thread and it seems still there a confusion in the idea about what a bottleneck is really...from all what i have read from all answers , i can conclude that a bottleneck mostly is like the one who explained it as a four lane street that gets to two or one lane at the end of it where traffic gets its high potential...


thanx to everyone who explained to me

i appreciate all helps done

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

 

[waelh2001]

lol .....u think i havent searched or googled the term bottleneck....i already seen this picture in google.......its kind of funny since it is the real bottleneck lol

i was hoping to find it explained in a picture in terms of computer field but i couldnt...anyway.....this thread most likely explained everything to me
thanx to everybody

 

[jitpublisher]

There are entire books written on the bottleneck theory.
For anyone interested in diving into the entire bottleneck theory, "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt is the manufacturers' bible on bottlenecks.
In manufacturing, learning how to spot and effectively eliminate bottlenecks without throwing tons of money at them it is the law of production, and has a tremendous effect on a companies profitability.

Very simply, it states that MAXIMUM TOTAL OUTPUT of ANY system is equal to the MAXIMUM OUTPUT OF THE SLOWEST part of the system.

Take the carpool lane on the freeway for instance. You have the 1 car going 10 mph slower than what everyone else is driving. No matter how much in a hurry everyone is, no one can go faster than the slowest car traveling in that lane over a given distance. He is the bottleneck in that system at that point in time.

 

[fred_likes_fish]

In gaming, if you have a slow CPU and a fast GPU, the CPU is the bottleneck.

If you have a fast CPU and a slow GPU then performance will be limited by the GPU, so it is the bottleneck.

 

[HenrikG]

I was just about to do that... :lol:

 

[Joshwatt98]

Haha I like these answers however for me I just get that a bottle neck is basically were one component is too powerful for anot her component I just got an msi rx 480 gaming x 8gb and went to play skyrim my graphics on maxed are amamzing and frame rates constantly high however it will jump every few seconds or bottle neck due to my cpu which is an amd fx 4300

 

[Ecky]

In gaming, bottlenecks are not simple. GPU and CPU load are independent of each other, largely.

If a game can only run at 40fps on your CPU, but 60fps on your GPU at low settings, 40fps at medium settings and 20fps at high settings, then:

-At low settngs, you'd get 40fps, because the CPU is "bottlenecking".
-At medium settings, both CPU and GPU are capable of the exact same framerate so there's no bottleneck
-At high settings, the GPU is the bottleneck and you'd only get 20fps

What complicates things is that the CPU and GPU loads change from game to game and from scene to scene. Some games need more CPU power for the same framerates, while others are very light on the CPU. Also, increasing or decreasing graphical settings can put more or less work on the GPU, while there are generally no settings that can affect how loaded the CPU is. If you're getting slow framerates and your GPU is the weak link you can simply drop graphics, but if your CPU is the weak link, there's nothing you can do about it but replace the CPU. For this reason I tend to recommend people spend proportionally more on CPUs.