Sony's Multicore Application Runtime on Cell Linux

[patsu]

ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/Sony-PS3/mars/MARS-OLS-2008.pdf

It's sounds like a replacement for libspe2 (even though it's built on top of it). The SPUlets manage their own scheduling and workload (PPU programs can participate too). The author claims better performance than libspe2 if number of "threads" > number of SPUs.

He also has 2 real-world examples: OpenSSL and zlib.

[patsu]

Found this in the open source Cell development mailing list:
http://ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2008-December/006107.html


A new release of MARS is now available.

Release v1.1.0
==============
Workload Module Framework, NUMA Support with Test Suite

Major Changes
-------------
* add support for NUMA
* add initial test suite
* add workload module framework
* bug fixes

The update release is available at:

ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/Sony-PS3/mars/

/latest --> /1.1.0
|---mars-1.1.0-1.ppc.rpm RPM for MARS libraries
|---mars-1.1.0-1.src.rpm RPM for MARS source
|---mars-devel-1.1.0-1.ppc.rpm RPM for MARS development headers
|---mars-docs-1.1.0-1.ppc.rpm RPM for MARS documentation
|---mars-samples-1.1.0-1.ppc.rpm RPM for MARS samples
|---/mars-docs-1.1.0 html documentation
|---mars-docs-1.1.0.tar.gz tarball of html documentation
|---mars-src-1.1.0.tar.gz tarball of sources (includes samples)
|---openssl-cell-engine-1.1.0.tar.gz v1.1.0 compatible openssl sample
|---zlib-mars-0.2.3.tar.gz v1.1.0 compatible zlib sample

The git repo of the sources is here:

git://git.infradead.org/ps3/mars-src.git


---
MARS is a multi-tasking runtime system for multi-core processors.
The current implementation is for the Cell BE. The system is
co-processor centric, in that the co-processors each run a micro
kernel that generally runs independent of the host processor.

More info is available here:
ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/Sony-PS3/mars/presentations


Regards,
Yuji Mano

[Crossbar]

Stumbled on this while I was googling information about the SpursEngine.

The Mars reference was found in this document (http://www.ksrp.or.jp/fais/sec/cell/fais/news/pdf/kenkyutheme/hayashi_workshop2008_v2.pdf).

Here is a recent PowerPoint presentation about Mars.

http://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/Sony-PS3/mars/presentations/MARS-CELF-20090903.pdf

Seems like it is progressing well, the latest 1.1.4 update (http://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/Sony-PS3/mars/1.1.4/)was in July this year.