AbstractThis paper discusses our efforts in implementing a divide and conquer algorithm (adaptive quadrature) on the HEP computer system. The one PEM HEP system performs in a MIMD fashion by pipelining execution of instructions from different processes. Unlike most divide and conquer approaches, our strategy ensures that the program will never deadlock due to memory expansion or spawning too many processes. Within this constraint we develop and analyse two different implementations: one using a static number of processes and the other a dynamic number of processes. Our results examine the relative performance of these two schemes. In addition we briefly discuss some of our impressions concerning some ‘myths of parallel programming