If I call matlabpool open 4 and I have 4 cores, will I work in parallel with 4 or with 3 workers?

Hi, I have a desktop machine with 4 cores available. 1) I wonder whether, calling a pool of 4 workers with the PCT, there will be 4 workers working in parallel, or just 3 since 1 is the client. 2) Working with a cluster workstation (with MDCS), when I connect to the master node (client), I run my code in parallel calling "n" workers, and I want to compare the simulation time of the parallel computation with that of the sequential one (I want to see the speedup). For the sequential computation, should I call in the master node matlabpool open 1 (calling 1 slave node from the master node) or should I work directly with the master node, than I don't need to call a matlabpool? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

[Thomas]

If you call matlabpool open local 4 - you will have 4 workers (though you will have 5 matlab instances running - 1 master ans 4 workers)

To study speedup you can just run the code sequentially on the master- I do not think you need to start a matlabpool with 1 worker. (I would also convert my 'parfor' to a regular 'for' while running sequentially)

Answer 2

[Giovanni De Luca]

Thank you Thomas. Then, according to the first answer, if a call 4 workers the theoretical linear speedup I can obtain is 4, since I work with 4 workers in parallel. RIght? By the way, if I have 4 cores in my machine (with hyperthreading disable) and I call for 4 workers, is 1 core shared between the client and 1 workers, whilst the other 3 cores are assigned to the left workers? I make this question because I would to understand how the shared memory (not the last level of cache, just the RAM) is partitioned along the instance of Matlab when I work in parallel. Thank you