User manual

1 Introduction
What Are the Distributed Computing Products?
In this section...
“Overview” on page 1-2
“Determining Product Installation and Versions” on page 1-3
Overview
Distributed Computing Toolbox and MATLAB Distributed Computing Engine
enable you to coordinate and execute independent MATLAB operations
simultaneously on a cluster of computers, speeding up execution of large
MATLAB jobs.
A job is some large operation that you need to perform in your MATLAB
session. A job is b roken down into segments called tasks. You decide how best
to divide your job into tasks. You could divide your job into identical tasks,
buttasksdonothavetobeidentical.
The MATLAB session in which the job and its tasks are defined is called the
client session. Often, this is on the machine where you program M ATLAB.
The client uses Distributed Computing Toolbox to perform the definitio n
of jobs and tasks. MATLAB Distributed Computing Engine is the product
that performs the execution of your job by evaluating ea ch of its tasks an d
returning the result to your client session.
The job manager is the part of the engine that coordinates the execution of
jobs and the evaluation of their tasks. The job manager distributes the tasks
for evaluation to the engine’s individual MATLAB sessions calle d workers.
Use of the MathWorks job manage r is optional; the distribution of tasks to
workers can a lso be performed by a third-party scheduler, such as Windows
CCS or Platform LSF.
See the “Gloss ary” on page Glossary-1 for definitions of the d i s tributed
computing terms used in this manual.
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