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multiple processes can be better or worse (Score:3, Informative)
Sometime multiple processes can get more done - for example, if a single process spends a large portion of its time waiting for external events then multiple processes can run at the same time without slowing each other down.
However, if the processes all compete for the same resource (i.e. they are CPU-bound, or they spend all of their time reading from different parts of the same disk) then they can interfere proportionally and take n times longer.
Finally, if their competition for the same resource is bad enough (like there are too many to fit into memory, or they cause sequential I/O to be turned into random I/O with lots of seeks) they can interfere more than proportionally and take longer to run together than it would take to run them all one-at-a-time sequentially.
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Re:multiple processes can be better or worse (Score:2, Informative)
This happens with databases where the same data and same queries are run.