[Cbe-oss-dev] MARS on Cell blades ? Cell image / video codecs?

[Werner Armingeon]

Yuji,

thanks a lot for your explanations.

In a discussion with developers of Cell libraries we found serios 
problems in combining different libraries with fix requirements for the 
number of SPUs. It seems impossible to use such libraries in parallel. 
If you have luck you can use it by scheduling in very coarse steps. I 
have some further questions here:

- Is seems true that linking libraries based on different frame works ( 
i. e. libspe & MARS ) is difficult or even impossible?
- Libraries based on MARS can be linked together and can run in parallel 
without too much overhead?
- This would cry for a standard frame work for SPU management if you 
have complex applications. "Complex" means even any application with 
more than one SPU-accelerated algorithm as it is the case in multimedia 
applications supporting different video and audio standards, think of a 
transcoder of an video+audio stream. You need 4 video+audio de- + encoder.
- Is it really easy to use different libraries based on MARS as I would 
like it or are there some hidden show stoppers? Possibly the 
initialization of MARS must be split off from both libs and you have to 
obey additional rules?
- Do you have some experience in MARSifying algorithms based on other 
SPU interface standards?

My feeling is that without such a compatible Cell programming standard 
which guarantees interoperability you cannot serious develop libraries 
for general use. For sure you would prefer MARS ;-), and what I learned 
from the presentation and documentation this would be a reasonable 
choice. Are there even any others?

A final question: Even if you have only one simple algorithm in your 
application to be Cell optimized would MARS make the development easier 
and more efficient compared to libspe?

Many thanks again for your help!

Werner










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