Is there a way to speed up the time for calling external program?

I am doing optimization problem. The objective function requires to call external program. But time for calling the program (0.1s) is much longer than the analysis of external program itself (0.01s). The optimization needs thousands of iteration to find optimum solution, so this takes hours. Is there a way to shorten the time for calling external program as it consumes most of required time?

Example of my script:

% Optimization
x = ga(@fun,100);

% Objective function
function y = fun(x)
    % writing input for external program
    fprintf(fopen('input.tcl','wt'),'%s\n',x);
    % running external program
    !opensees.exe analysis.tcl
    % read analysis result
    out = fscanf(fopen('output.tcl','r'),'%f',[100 Inf]);
    % objective function
    y = fun2(out);
end

[Walter Roberson]

You could experiment with using System.Diagnostics.Process

[Gifari Zulkarnaen]

What is that? Can you explain more?

[per isakson]

google for "System.Diagnostics.Process"

[Mario Malic]

Well, starting and closing a process that many times can take some time. During every iteration of ga, program gets opened and closed.

Maybe you can find open a program before you call the ga, and command it somehow to run the analysis.

Check here for the command. https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/583955-get-the-status-using-system-command-when-program-has-been-closed#answer_485480?s_tid=prof_contriblnk

[Gifari Zulkarnaen]

@per isakson: Yes I've tried to google it, but I still can't understand it, I am not from IT background.

@Mario Malic: Oh that's good idea, I will try find a way to do that. Thanks.

[Mario Malic]

I stumbled upon this, maybe this is the way to go.

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/414795-run-exe-with-an-input-file-and-close-upon-process-exit#answer_335274