BIRTHDAY_REMOTE
Remote Execution of a Parallel MATLAB Program


BIRTHDAY_REMOTE is a directory of MATLAB programs which illustrate how to submit a parallel MATLAB program to run on a remote machine.

Before remote submission of jobs is possible, you must have an account on the remote machine, and go through some steps to ensure that that machine and your desktop machine can communicate properly. If you have not carried out these steps, refer to the document "Notes on Enabling Remote Submission of MATLAB Jobs" listed in the references below.

The underlying program, birthday.m, simply assigns birthdays to each member in a group, then checks if any pair has a common birthday.

The intermediate program birthdayscript.m calls birthday.m many times, carrying out a Monte Carlo investigation to estimate the probability of this event for a variety of group sizes.

The higher level program brunbirthday.m uses MATLAB's BATCH command to submit a job that carries out birthdayscript either on your local desktop, or else on a remote system - in particular, Virginia Tech's ITHACA cluster.

This example illustrates the use of the BATCH command. "brunbirthday" is implemented as a function rather than a script, so that we can wait for the job to complete before retrieving the result and setting the return value of prob.

Usage:

Start up MATLAB on your desktop. Under the Parallel Menu, make sure you have selected either the "local" configuration, or the configuration that corresponds to a remote machine on which you wish to run the job. Then, at the MATLAB prompt, type

prob = brunbirthday ( nw )
where

The BATCH command is arguably more useful in cases where the user wants the batch job to "run in the background" - so that the user can continue interacting with MATLAB while that particular calculation is going on. If you want to experiment with this way of working, then instead of issued the "brunbirthday" command, you can issue the following command (which is actually part of brunbirthday!):

my_job = batch('birthdayscript','FileDependencies','birthday.m', ... 'matlabpool', nw);
from the MATLAB comand window, assuming that you have set nw to the desired number of workers. The job will be worked on in the background. In order for you to check to see if it is finished, issue the command
state = get ( my_job, 'state' )
The value of state will tell you the job's status.

Related Data and Programs:

CG_DISTRIBUTED, a MATLAB program which implements a version of the NAS CG conjugate gradient benchmark, using distributed memory.

CELL_DETECTION_TASKS, a MATLAB program which creates modified versions of a sequence of gray-scale TIF files containing images of cells; the process of each file is carried out independently, using the "task" feature of MATLAB's parallel computing toolbox.

COLLATZ_PARFOR, a MATLAB program which seeks the maximum Collatz sequence between 1 and N, running in parallel using MATLAB's "PARFOR" feature.

COLOR_REMOTE, a MATLAB program which carries out the color segmentation of an image in parallel, via SPMD commands; this includes instructions on how to run the job, via MATLAB's BATCH facility, on a remote system such as Virginia Tech's ITHACA cluster.

CONTRAST_SPMD, a MATLAB program which demonstrates the SPMD parallel programming feature for image operations; the client reads an image, the workers increase contrast over separate portions, and the client assembles and displays the results.

CONTRAST2_SPMD, a MATLAB program which demonstrates the SPMD parallel programming feature for image operations; this improves the contrast_spmd program by allowing the workers to share some data; this makes it possible to eliminate artificial "seams" in the processed image.

FD2D_HEAT_EXPLICIT_SPMD, a MATLAB program which uses the finite difference method and explicit time stepping to solve the time dependent heat equation in 2D. A black and white image is used as the "initial condition". MATLAB's SPMD facility is used to carry out the computation in parallel.

FMINCON_PARALLEL, a MATLAB program which demonstrates the use of MATLAB's FMINCON constrained minimization function, taking advantage of MATLAB's Parallel Computing Toolbox for faster execution.

IMAGE_DENOISE_SPMD, a MATLAB program which demonstrates the SPMD parallel programming feature for image operations; the client reads an image, the workers process portions of it, and the client assembles and displays the results.

LINEAR_SOLVE_DISTRIBUTED, a MATLAB program which solves a linear system A*x=b using MATLAB's spmd facility, so that the matrix A is "distributed" across multiple MATLAB workers.

LYRICS_REMOTE, a MATLAB program which runs in parallel, using three workers which cooperate "systolically", that is, as through they were on an assembly line. The output from worker 1 is passed to worker 2 for further processing, and so on. This includes instructions on how to run the job, via MATLAB's BATCH facility, on a remote system such as Virginia Tech's ITHACA cluster.

MATLAB_COMMANDLINE, MATLAB programs which illustrate how MATLAB can be run from the UNIX command line, that is, not with the usual MATLAB command window.

MATLAB_DISTCOMP, a MATLAB program which remotely runs a set of 5 jobs on the Ithaca cluster. These jobs are equivalent to the BIRTHDAY_REMOTE, COLOR_REMOTE, KNAPSACK_REMOTE, LYRICS_REMOTE and MD_REMOTE jobs.

MATLAB_PARALLEL, MATLAB programs which illustrate "local" parallel programming on a single computer with MATLAB's Parallel Computing Toolbox.

MATLAB_REMOTE, MATLAB programs which illustrate the use of remote job execution, in which a desktop copy of MATLAB sends programs and data to a remote machine for execution. Included is information needed to properly configure the local machine.

MD_PARFOR, a MATLAB program which carries out a molecular dynamics simulation, running in parallel using MATLAB's "PARFOR" feature.

ODE_SWEEP_PARFOR, a MATLAB program which demonstrates how the PARFOR command can be used to parallelize the computation of a grid of solutions to a parameterized system of ODE's.

PLOT_SPMD, a MATLAB library which demonstrates the SPMD parallel programming feature, by having a number of labs compute parts of a sine plot, which is then displayed by the client process.

PRIME_PARFOR, a MATLAB program which counts the number of primes between 1 and N; running in parallel using MATLAB's "PARFOR" feature.

PRIME_SPMD, a MATLAB program which counts the number of primes between 1 and N; running in parallel using MATLAB's "SPMD" feature.

QUAD_PARFOR, a MATLAB program which estimates an integral using quadrature; running in parallel using MATLAB's "PARFOR" feature.

QUAD_SPMD, a MATLAB program which estimates an integral using quadrature; running in parallel using MATLAB's "SPMD" feature.

QUAD_TASKS, a MATLAB program which estimates an integral using quadrature; running in parallel using MATLAB's "TASK" feature.

RANDOM_WALK_2D_AVOID_TASKS, a MATLAB program which computes many self avoiding random walks in 2D by creating a job which defines each walk as a task, and then computes these independently using MATLAB's Parallel Computing Toolbox task computing capability.

SATISFY_PARFOR, a MATLAB program which demonstrates, for a particular circuit, an exhaustive search for solutions of the circuit satisfiability problem, running in parallel using MATLAB's "PARFOR" feature.

SUBSET_SUM_TASKS, a MATLAB program which solves a subset sum problem by exhaustive search, subdividing the search range among separate tasks.

Reference:

The User's Guide for the Parallel Computing Toolbox is available at http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/pdf_doc/distcomp/distcomp.pdf

Examples and Tests:

You can go up one level to the MATLAB source codes.


Last revised on 28 October 2009.