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.
CORE MODULES
Three modules make up the core engine for MCE.
Provides the Core API for Many-Core Engine. The various MCE options are described here.
Temporary directory creation, cleanup, and signal handling.
Utility functions for Many-Core Engine.
There are 4 add-on modules for use with MCE.
Provides a collection of sugar methods and output iterators for preserving output order.
Provides a simple semaphore implementation supporting threads and processes.
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 queuing to work for both children (spawned from fork) and threads.
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.
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.
Miscellaneous additions included with the distribution.
Describes various demonstrations for MCE including a Monte Carlo simulation.
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, cookbook, and examples are hosted at GitHub.
MCE::Shared
provides data sharing capabilities for MCE
. It includes MCE::Hobo
for running code asynchronously.