Word.ws English Dictionary

Pournelle's law

Pournelle's law proper noun: the rule of thumb that there should be at least one CPU for each user of a system.

Proper noun

Pournelle's law

  1. The rule of thumb that there should be at least one CPU for each user of a system.
  2. The principle that any bureaucracy eventually comes to serve its own interests rather than those it was created to help with.

Origin of Pournelle's law

After Jerry Pournelle (1933–2017), an American writer of science fiction.

Questions about Pournelle's law

What does Pournelle's law mean?
Pournelle's law means the rule of thumb that there should be at least one CPU for each user of a system.
What part of speech is Pournelle's law?
Pournelle's law is a proper noun.

Words near Pournelle's law in the dictionary

  1. pourlieu
  2. pourlieus
  3. Pournelle
  4. Pournelle chart
  5. Pournelle charts
  6. Pournelle's law
  7. Pournelles
  8. pourover
  9. pourovers
  10. pourparler
  11. pourparlers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Pournelle's law (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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