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In my program, I give the ability to execute certain code either as parallel or non-parallel. I don't know what to call the non-parallel option though. Is Linear a good term?

What would be the best word for this?

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Note that the term concurrent refers to software whereas the term parallel refers to hardware. – Giorgio Oct 3 '12 at 19:42
I haven't heard the term concurrent much lately. Mostly heard it back in the day of single processor, but non-deterministic multi-threaded apps. Nowadays with multi-processor everyone that I talk to just calls it "parallel". – Brian Knoblauch Oct 4 '12 at 20:19

3 Answers

up vote 15 down vote accepted

Perhaps "serial" or "sequential".

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up vote 9 down vote

"Sequentially" is IMHO the term you are looking for.

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Thanks guys, would "sequential" give the impression that the code will execute once? I should have mentioned this but the difference between options are like "per-pixel" vs "once for the whole image". – Joan Venge Oct 3 '12 at 19:18
"sequential" gives the impression that the code's sub-tasks will execute one after the other, and that only one task will execute at any given time, rather than using threading to scheudle multiple tasks at once. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Oct 3 '12 at 19:26
up vote 3 down vote

"Serial" is the descriptor I've always heard (and used) applied to that type of code.

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