MATLAB: Parallel computing toolbox…gpu choice

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to establish whethr to subscribe to matlab and assorted toolboxes.

If I've understood it correctly the parallel computing toolbox will be able to leverage my hexcore dual thread cpu (nice new intel 8700) and it may also be able to leverage a gpu if I bought one.

My, probably naive, understanding of the various types of gpu is that they typically have slightly different purposes and also different numbers of cuda cores, speed of operation and something called a 'compute capability'.

I think matlab say they only leverage the compute capability …but may have misunderstood.

So I had a quick look at some nvidia cards and am a little confused…

geforce 1050, price : £120, compute capability: 6.1

tesla p40, price : £6400, compute capability: 6.1

Obviously the tesla card is a LOT faster but is over 50 times the cost (sic!)

Are Matlab really saying that they can only leverage the compute capability in the parallel computing toolbox? If so, does this mean that the vast extra speed in the Tesla (compared to a basic kids' gaming gpu) makes no difference …or is it more to do do with how any user of Matlab constructs the code ?

Any clarification would be great and may help me in deciding whether to buy a gpu or indeed the parallel computing toolbox (I am trying to model our solar system's interconnected movement which is quite processing intensive).

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Compute Capability just tells you what generation of NVIDIA GPUs the device comes from, so its capability is related to its instruction set, memory behaviour, things like that. Performance is about how much compute hardware there is on the card and how much of it is set aside for double precision computation (and other boring things about memory bandwidth, kernel launch latency etc).

Compute Capability is relevant to MATLAB only in that MATLAB has a minimum GPU architecture (compute capability) that it supports (because the CUDA libraries do).

Advice-wise the Titan V has better performance than the P40 and supports double-precision too with good performance. And it's much cheaper, and a later card generation.