This approach allows you to start multiple instances of the tool on different nodes and have them communicate over a network so that code can be executed in parallel. To get them to run code in parallel usually requires some add-ons, such as MPI, and rewriting the code. Serial in this case means that the vast majority of the code is executed on a single core, although some of the programs have the ability to do a small amount of parallel execution. They have varying degrees of success with Matlab compatibility, but all are inherently serial applications. These tools try to be as close as possible to Matlab syntax so that Matlab code will transfer over easily, with the possible exception of Simulink and GUI Matlab code. I’ll be briefly covering Scilab, GNU Octave, and FreeMat. I won’t be looking at other numerical tools that have a syntax different from Matlab, such as R or Scipy rather, I’ll be covering tools that are trying to be like Matlab. In this article, I want to talk about a few of these tools so you can get an idea of what’s available in the open source world for Matlab-like tools. When people ask what tools or applications they can try on their shiny new cluster, I tend to recommend one of these Matlab-like tools, even though they aren’t strictly parallel right out of the box (so to speak). This brings up the category of tools that are typically called “Matlab-like” that is, they try to emulate the concept of Matlab and make the syntax basically compatible so moving back and forth is relatively easy. I don’t want to take anything away from MathWorks, the creator of Matlab, because their product is a wonderful application, but for a number of reasons, Matlab might not be the answer for some people (e.g., they either can’t afford Matlab or can’t afford 25,000 licenses, they just want to try a few Matlab features, or they want or need access to the source code). Needless to say, Matlab is used very heavily at a number of places, so it is a very good candidate for running on an HPC system. Some researchers use it for parameter sweeps by launching 25,000 or more individual Matlab runs at the same time. People are using Matlab for a variety of tasks that range from the humanities, to science, to engineering, to games, and more. For example, a fairly recent blog posting from Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Research Computing Group showed that the second most popular Environment Module was Matlab. From people who build a simple two-node cluster all the way up to people who have access to very large systems, one of the most common questions about high-performance computing (HPC) is: “What applications can I run on an HPC system?” One of the most popular applications is Matlab, which a large number of people use in their everyday work and research – either Matlab or Matlab-like tools.
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