The EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE) grid is now running The Mathworks' Parallel Computing Toolbox and Matlab Distributed Computing Server. These tools are fully integrated with gLite, the middleware used by EGEE, which is Europe's largest high performance computing consortium. Prior to this integration, users could not work with Matlab in a grid environment. Now, EGEE users can access the power of the grid directly from their desktop.
The MathWorks parallel computing tools let users develop Matlab and Simulink applications that can work in a variety of environments, from a multicore desktop to computer clusters and grids. A grid is a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers that act in concert to perform very large tasks. Co-funded by the European Commission, EGEE is a grid infrastructure that makes immense computing resources accessible to users. With more than 70,000 CPUs and access to more than 250 HPC centres, EGEE provides users, irrespective of their location, with the large-scale computing power necessary to run their applications.
'EGEE invited feedback from its users on their use of MathWorks tools. Fifty per cent of the respondents said that they use Matlab and Parallel Computing Toolbox for their critical applications, while another 30 per cent said that they were heavy or frequent users,' said Erwin Laure, technical director of the EGEE project. 'Parallel Computing Toolbox simply makes it easier for users to develop parallel applications in Matlab. On our grid systems, Matlab Distributed Computing Server enables users to execute the same Matlab codes and Simulink models in the grid that were executed on the desktop.'
