MATLAB: Using all cores with parfor

Question

I have 2013A on a win7 64 bit quod core machine. I do not have the parallel computing toolbox.

I use a parfor loop to carry out a calculation. Each calculation takes 30 mins and is just processing data held in memory. There is no I/O.

I look at windows task manager and see the average CPU load is 40% and only one core seems to be being heavily used. I know when coding in perl I can multi-thread the code to ensure each of the cores is maxed out, giving 100% usage in total.

I dont think I can set matlabpool without the PC toolbox.

How can I improve the situation?

Answer 1

And because you don't have the Parallel Computing Toolbox, parfor will run serially anyway. There is more overhead with parfor so I would recommend against using it if you don't have Parallel Computing Toolbox.

You can contact the friendly account manager for your organization to get a trial of the Parallel Computing Toolbox if it interests you.