About this publication

This programmer's guide provides detailed information regarding the use of the Accelerated Library Framework APIs. It contains an overview of the Accelerated Library Framework, detailed reference information about the APIs, and usage information for programming with the APIs.

This book addresses the ALF implementation for the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell BE) architecture.

For information about the accessibility features of this product, see Accessibility features.

Who should use this book

This book is intended for use by accelerated library developers and compute kernel developers.

What's new in this release

ALF includes the following new functionality and changes for the Software Development Kit for Multicore Acceleration Version 3.0 (SDK 3.0):
  • The API have been expanded to cover the multiple-program-multiple-data (MPMD) programming model.
  • Heterogenous accelerators are supported in the API instead of homogeneous accelerators.
  • Task dependency has been added as the method to describe the relationship between multiple tasks. Synchronization points have been removed as task dependency provides a more flexible replacement.
  • You can now register a handle for task event notifications.
  • The ALF API now allow you to have your own routines to initialize and merge existing task context on accelerators.
  • The API now provides a set of function calls to manage a task descriptor structure. The task descriptor structure now contains a task context description. The alf_task_info_t structure is no longer exposed.
  • Multiple kernels in a single image are supported.
  • The initialization routines (alf_configure, alf_query, alf_init) have been changed.

Related information

See Related documentation.

Previous topic: Edition notice

How to send your comments

Your feedback is important in helping to provide the most accurate and highest quality information. If you have any comments about this publication, send your comments using Resource Link™ at http://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink. Click Feedback on the navigation pane. Be sure to include the name of the book, the form number of the book, and the specific location of the text you are commenting on (for example, a page number or table number).