MCE - Many-Core Engine for Perl providing parallel processing capabilities
This document describes MCE version 1.522
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.
Provides the Core API for Many-Core Engine.
Temporary directory creation/cleanup and signal handling.
Utility functions for Many-Core Engine.
Currently, there are 2 addon modules.
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.
Exports functions mapped directly to MCE methods; e.g. mce_wid. The module allows 3 options; :manager, :worker, and :getter.
MCE 1.5 includes 6 models. 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.
Provides a parallel loop utilizing MCE for building creative loops.
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.
Provides a parallel grep implementation similar to the native grep function.
Provides a parallel map model similar to the native map function.
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.
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.
A placeholder for the examples included with the distribution.
Describes various demonstations for MCE including a Monte Carlo simulation.
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) 2012-2014 by Mario E. Roy
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License.
See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.
To install MCE, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm MCE
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install MCE
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.