ALF for Hybrid-x86 is an implementation of the ALF API specification in a system configuration with an Opteron x86_64 system connected to one or more Cell BE processors. In this implementation, the Opteron system serves as the host, the SPEs on the Cell BE BladeCenters act as accelerators, and the PPEs on the Cell BE processors act as facilitators only. From the ALF application programmer’s perspective, the application interaction, as defined by the ALF API, is between the Hybrid-x86 host and the SPE accelerators.
This implementation of the ALF API uses the Data Communication and Synchronization (DaCS) library as the process management and data transport layer. Refer to the DaCS for Hybrid-x86 Programmer’s Guide and API Reference for more information about how to set up DaCS in this environment.
To manage the interaction between the ALF host runtime on the Opteron system and the ALF accelerator runtime on the SPE, this implementation starts a PPE process (ALF PPE daemon) for each ALF runtime. The PPE program is provided as part of the standard ALF runtime library.