I picked a high number to emphasize the point basically, but yes, one needs to pick a good -j value.
make -j level
Posted Dec 10, 2010 20:59 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
[Link]
And if you have an exceptionally slow filesystem, also multiply by the expansion factor (single thread total time / CPU time). One one system I use, with a single CPU, I found -j6 gave minimum elapsed time.