Improving the throughput of a pipeline by insertion of delays

A pipeline is defined to be a collection of resources, called segments which can be kept busy simultaneously. A task once initiated, flows from segment to segment for its execution. A collision occurs if two or more tasks attempt to use the same segment at the same time. The collision characteristics of a pipeline with respect to a schedule of task initiations are investigated. A methodology is presented for modifying the collision characteristics with the insertion of delays so as to increase the utilization of segments and hence the throughput under appropriate scheduling.