MATLAB: Differences createCommunicatingJob( …, ‘Type’,’pool’) and …’Type’, ‘SPMD’)

Question

I'm just introducing myself into Parallel Computing Toolbox and trying to organize all its functionality – for better understanding purposes.

Now, I'm wondering:

• createJob(…) creates an Independent Job (check!)
• createCommunicatingJob(…, 'Type', 'SPMD') creates a communcating Job which runs simulatneously on all workers, due to synchronized interprocess communication purposes, bla, bla… (check!)

BUT:

• createCommunicatingJob(…, 'Type', 'Pool') creates a communicating Job which: A 'pool' job runs the specified task function with a MATLAB pool available to run the body of parfor loops or spmd blocks.

WHAT?!?:

• the inside of a parfor loop? parfor is independent so, why classifying as CommunicatingJob? (hmm#1)
• spmd tasky must be run simultaneously .. otherwise communication might be quite tricky … (hmm#2)

So, where's my understanding problem …? I'm a little … confused …

Enlightenment whished-for … 🙂

Cheers, Tobi

Answer 1

Both spmd and parfor require a matlabpool to be open to send their work to each worker in the pool. You can create the matlabpool on your client using the 'matlabpool' function, which creates an interactive matlabpool tied to the lifetime of your MATLAB session.

If however you wish to run your code in the background, or submit it to a cluster to run later, you create a communicating job of type 'Pool'. This creates a job that starts a matlabpool on the cluster, using one of the workers as the 'client' and the remaining workers to form the matlabpool.