What's the opposite of "embarrassingly parallel"?

Andrew Bainbridge picture Andrew Bainbridge · Apr 30, 2009 · Viewed 8.3k times · Source

According to Wikipedia, an "embarrassingly parallel" problem is one for which little or no effort is required to separate the problem into a number of parallel tasks. Raytracing is often cited as an example because each ray can, in principle, be processed in parallel.

Obviously, some problems are much harder to parallelize. Some may even be impossible. I'm wondering what terms are used and what the standard examples are for these harder cases.

Can I propose "Annoyingly Sequential" as a possible name?

Answer

Brian Rasmussen picture Brian Rasmussen · Apr 30, 2009

Inherently sequential.

Example: The number of women will not reduce the length of pregnancy.