anticiparallelism

(ANTICIpatory PARALLELISM) Using idle machine cycles to perform utilitarian tasks in the background including the housekeeping done at boot time, disk defragging, file backup and other required tasks. Coined by Bob Metcalfe, industry guru and co-inventor of Ethernet, anticiparallelism requires hardware that is rock solid and software that is more fine grained, meaning that it would have to release control for the slightest amount of idle time to let other tasks take place. See grid computing.