  In order to provide particle identification (PID) of charged hadrons at the
future high-rate Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment the TOF group has
developed a large-area Time-of-Flight (ToF) wall equipped with Multi-gap
Resistive Plate Chambers (MRPC) capable to operate at incident particle fluxes
of up to 30 kHz/cm$^2$. Prior to its destined operation at the Facility for
Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) - starting in 2025 - this high-rate timing
MRPC technology will be used for physics research at two scientific pillars of
the FAIR Phase-0 program: the end-cap TOF upgrade of the STAR experiment at
RHIC and the mTOF wall of the mCBM experiment at SIS18. At STAR, the
fixed-target program of the Beam Energy Scan II (BES-II) will rely on 108 CBM
MRPC detectors for forward PID at trigger rates of up to 2 kHz. At mCBM,
high-performance benchmark runs of Lambda-baryon production at top SIS18
energies and CBM design interaction rates of 10 MHz will become feasible with a
PID backbone consisting of 25 CBM MRPC detectors. Apart from the physics
perspective, these pre-FAIR involvements will help gathering experience in
operating the final CBM TOF wall comprising about 1500 MRPC detectors and
110,000 readout channels. The status of the FAIR phase 0 program will be
discussed.
