Parallel Computing in Matlab

Overview

Teaching: 20 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• How to utilize multiple cores for Matlab programming

Objectives

• Learn about parfor

• The parfor executes for-loop iterations in parallel on workers in a parallel pool.

Example:

Using some intensive computing function:

Using single core for looping:

tic
for i =2:500
    d = abs(eig(rand(i)));
    E = d(1);
end
toc

Elapsed time is 22.101458 seconds.

Using parfor with 2 cpus for the loop

parpool(2)
tic
parfor i=2:500
    d = abs(eig(rand(i)));
    E = d(1);
end
toc
delete(gcp('nocreate'))

Elapsed time is 10.976068 seconds.

Key Points

• parallel for loop