MCE

This document describes MCE version 1.608

Many-Core Engine (MCE) for Perl helps enable a new level of performance by maximizing all available cores. MCE spawns a pool of workers and therefore does not fork a new process per each element of data. Instead, MCE follows a bank queuing model. Imagine the line being the data and bank-tellers the parallel workers. MCE enhances that model by adding the ability to chunk the next n elements from the input stream to the next available worker.

Input data is optional in MCE. Thus, input data is not required to run MCE.

Three modules make up the core engine for MCE.

MCE::Core

Provides the Core API for Many-Core Engine.

MCE::Signal

Temporary directory creation/cleanup and signal handling.

MCE::Util

Utility functions for Many-Core Engine.

There are 3 add-on modules.

MCE::Mutex

Provides a simple semaphore implementation supporting threads and processes.

MCE::Queue

Provides a hybrid queuing implementation for MCE supporting normal queues and priority queues from a single module. MCE::Queue exchanges data via the core engine to enable queueing to work for both children (spawned from fork) and threads.

MCE::Relay

Enables workers to receive and pass on information orderly with zero involvement by the manager process while running.

The models take Many-Core Engine to a new level for ease of use. Two options (chunk_size and max_workers) are configured automatically as well as spawning and shutdown.

MCE::Loop

Provides a parallel loop utilizing MCE for building creative loops.

MCE::Flow

A parallel flow model for building creative applications. This makes use of user_tasks in MCE. The author has full control when utilizing this model. MCE::Flow is similar to MCE::Loop, but allows for multiple code blocks to run in parallel with a slight change to syntax.

MCE::Grep

Provides a parallel grep implementation similar to the native grep function.

MCE::Map

Provides a parallel map model similar to the native map function.

MCE::Step

Provides a parallel step implementation utilizing MCE::Queue between user tasks. MCE::Step is a spin off from MCE::Flow with a touch of MCE::Stream. This model, introduced in 1.506, allows one to pass data from one sub-task into the next transparently.

MCE::Stream

Provides an efficient parallel implementation for chaining multiple maps and greps together through user_tasks and MCE::Queue. Like with MCE::Flow, MCE::Stream can run multiple code blocks in parallel with a slight change to syntax from MCE::Map and MCE::Grep.

Miscellaneous additions included with the distribution.

MCE::Candy

Provides a collection of sugar methods and output iterators for preserving output order.

MCE::Examples

A placeholder for the examples included with the distribution. Describes various demonstrations for MCE including a Monte Carlo simulation.

MCE::Subs

Exports functions mapped directly to MCE methods; e.g. mce_wid. The module allows 3 options; :manager, :worker, and :getter.

Perl 5.8.0 or later. PDL::IO::Storable is required in scripts running PDL.

The source is hosted at <http://code.google.com/p/many-core-engine-perl/>

Mario E. Roy, <marioeroy AT gmail DOT com>

Copyright (C) 2012-2015 by Mario E. Roy

MCE is released under the same license as Perl.

See <http://dev.perl.org/licenses/> for more information.