{"id":764,"date":"2009-03-06T15:50:05","date_gmt":"2009-03-06T14:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=764"},"modified":"2009-03-11T12:22:52","modified_gmt":"2009-03-11T11:22:52","slug":"matlab-2009a-released-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=764","title":{"rendered":"MATLAB 2009a released today."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The math software releases are coming thick and fast at the moment.  This latest release of Mathworks&#8217; flagship program comes with a huge number of improvements but possibly the most important in my mind right now is the following.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Utilization of eight cores on your desktop with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathworks.co.uk\/access\/helpdesk\/help\/toolbox\/distcomp\/rn\/bryq8jt-1.html\">Parallel Computing Toolbox (PCT)<br \/>\n<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When you use the Parallel Computing Toolbox with MATLAB 2008b or below, you can only make use of up to 4 cores simultaneously.\u00a0 This was starting to become a problem for users at my workplace because <strong>dual quad core <\/strong>machines are becoming increasingly common around there.<\/p>\n<p>I installed the PCT (at a cost of 192 pounds +VAT for the network licensed version) for the owner of such a machine a few months back and we immediately hit upon the 4 core limit of MATLAB 2008a.\u00a0 He had 8 cores and wanted to use them so I fired off an email to Mathworks support for advice.\u00a0 I figured that we would have to pay another 192 pounds for another 4 core PCT but I was wrong.\u00a0 So, very very wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Cutting a long story short we were told that if we wanted to use 8 cores then we would have to buy 8 licenses for their dsitributed computing server product at a total cost of <strong>1400 pounds + VAT<\/strong>. Ouch!<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;to summarize &#8211; the pricing structure we were being offered for MATLAB 2008a was<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Parallelisation over 4 cores cost 192 +VAT or 48 pounds per core<\/li>\n<li>Parellisation over 8 cores cost 1400 + VAT or 175 pounds per core<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I was rather stunned by this outcome and said as much to my long-suffering Mathworks account manager (who has the patience of a saint I think &#8211; I&#8217;d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank her for putting up with me).<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this has <strong>been fixed in 2009a<\/strong> and the PCT can now use up to <strong>8 cores<\/strong> and so\u00a0 this particular toolbox is now twice as powerful as it was before.<\/p>\n<p>Great news all round I think.<\/p>\n<p>If you enjoyed this article, feel free to <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/WalkingRandomly\">click here to subscribe to my RSS Feed.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The math software releases are coming thick and fast at the moment. This latest release of Mathworks&#8217; flagship program comes with a huge number of improvements but possibly the most important in my mind right now is the following. Utilization of eight cores on your desktop with Parallel Computing Toolbox (PCT) When you use the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math-software","category-matlab"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3swhs-ck","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":786,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions\/786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}