Parallel Computing Toolbox

Running Parallel Applications Interactively and as Batch Jobs

You can execute parallel applications interactively and in batch using Parallel Computing Toolbox. Using the matlabpool command, you can connect your MATLAB session to a pool of MATLAB workers that can run either locally on your desktop (using the toolbox) or on a computer cluster (using MATLAB Distributed Computing Server) to setup a dedicated interactive parallel execution environment. You can execute parallel applications from the MATLAB prompt on these workers and retrieve results immediately as computations finish, just as you would in any MATLAB session.

Running applications interactively is suitable when execution time is relatively short. When your applications need to run for a long time, you can use the toolbox to set them up to run as batch jobs. This enables you to free your MATLAB session for other activities while you execute large MATLAB and Simulink applications.

While your application executes in batch, you can shut down your MATLAB session and retrieve results later. The toolbox provides several mechanisms to manage offline execution of parallel programs, such as the batch function and job and task objects. Both the batch function and the job and task objects can be used to offload the execution of serial MATLAB and Simulink applications from a desktop MATLAB session.

Running parallel applications interactively and as batch jobs. You can run applications on your workstation using twelve workers available with the toolbox, or on a computer cluster using more workers available with MATLAB Distributed Computing Server.