pMATLAB: Parallel MATLAB Library for Signal Processing Applications

MATLAB® is one of the most commonly used languages for scientific computing with approximately one million users worldwide. At MIT Lincoln Laboratory, MATLAB is used by technical staff to develop sensor processing algorithms. MATLAB´s popularity is based on availability of high-level abstractions leading to reduced code development time. Due to the compute intensive nature of scientific computing, these applications often require long running times and would benefit greatly from increased performance offered by parallel computing. pMatlab (www.ll.mit.edu/pMatlab) implements partitioned global address space (PGAS) support via standard operator overloading techniques. The core data structures in pMatlab are distributed arrays and maps, which simplify parallel programming by removing the need for explicit message passing. This paper presents the pMatlab design and results for the HPC Challenge benchmark suite. Additionally, two case studies of pMatlab use are described.