A skewed request can severely impact the parallel efficiency of the system, eliminating the benefit of multiple AMPs. If the system is processing one skewed request step, all the AMPs with less processing to do must wait until the single skewed AMP with more processing to do completes. Only the skewed AMP runs at capacity while the other AMPs sit idle. In a mixed workload, the skewed AMP cannot respond as quickly as the other AMPs because it is clogged with skewed processing. All requests in the system can slow down when there is a skew.