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Compiling and Running Matlab Programs

Although full Matlab is available on Myriad, you can also compile Matlab programs on an external machine and then run them on Myriad using the Matlab runtime.

There are some caveats, however:

  • Your Matlab program must be compiled using a 64bit Linux version of the Matlab compiler; the compiled code is not cross-platform compatible, so for example, it cannot be built on macOS and then transferred to Myriad.

  • Piping code into the Matlab compiler will not work, and the main routine being executed must be converted into a proper Matlab function.

  • When arguments are passed into compiled Matlab executable, the compiled code does not automatically convert them to the required type (i.e. float or integer) as Matlab does from the command line. In this case the arguments, where necessary, must be converted to numbers using the str2num() function.

Compiling your program:§

The Matlab code is must be compiled using the mcc tool; this must be initially run as mcc -setup before anything is built. The mcc tool can actually be invoked from the interpreter command prompt and executing help mcc will give you quite a lot of information about how to use the tool, along with examples.

All .m files must be built into the compiled code with the first .m referenced in the build line acting as the main entry point for the built code. It may be useful to include data files in the built code which are handled in the build line using the -a <datafile> option. Please remember to make the .m file an actual function and all other dependencies sub-functions, otherwise the compiled code will not execute.

Some important mcc options:§

  • -m: this is option which runs the macro to generate a C stand-alone application.
    -R: specify runtime options for the Matlab compiler runtime.

Some important runtime options:§

  • -nojvm: disables the java virtual machine, which may speed-up certain codes. This option cannot be used if you are planning to have, for example pdf files or any other plots produced as output of your run.
    -nodisplay: prevents anything being displayed on the screen, can be useful if this happens with the application as this would not work correctly in batch mode.
    --singleCompThread: use only a single computational thread, otherwise Matlab will try to use more than one thread when the operation being performed supports multi threading.

Once the application has been built, there should be an executable named after the prefix of the .m file, generally <app name>.m, and a shell script with the name run\_<app name>.sh - both these files need to be transferred to Myriad.

If you have been given pre-compiled code by someone else, the application may not work as the Matlab runtime version must reasonably match that of the Matlab compiler that was used to build the application. The runtime is freely distributable and can be found in the installation directory of Matlab. The runtime has a GUI install interface and it can be installed at any location in your home directory.

For more information, please read the Matlab documentation.

Job submission scripts:§

There are three things that you must take into account:

  1. The location of the Matlab compiler runtime needs to be passed to the script used to run the compiled Matlab code as the first argument.
  2. The compiler runtime needs a directory (cache) to unpack files to when it is running. By default this directory is in the home folder. Since the Matlab runs will be single node jobs, the cache location should be in the storage on the compute nodes which is stored in TMPDIR.

For example, a multi-threaded serial script should look something like:

#!/bin/bash -l
# Batch script to run a serial job on Legion under SGE.

# Force bash as the executing shell.
#$ -S /bin/bash

# Request ten minutes of wallclock time (format hours:minutes:seconds).
#$ -l h_rt=0:10:0

# Request 1 gigabyte of RAM 
#$ -l mem=1G

# Request 36 cores
#$ -pe smp 36

# Set the name of the job.
#$ -N Matlab_Job_1

# Set the working directory to somewhere in your scratch space.
# For example:
##$ -wd /home//Scratch
# Alternatively, you can automatically use the current working directory 
#  if you launch your job from anywhere *within ~/Scratch*
#$ -cwd

# store the MATLAB runtime path in a global environment variable (MCR_HOME)
export MCR_HOME=/shared/ucl/apps/Matlab/R2011a/Runtime7.15/v715/

# the path to the Matlab cache is stored in the global variable MCR_CACHE_ROOT 
export MCR_CACHE_ROOT=$TMPDIR/mcr_cache

# make sure the directory in MCR_CACHE_ROOT exists
mkdir -p $MCR_CACHE_ROOT

# Run the executable, passing the path stored in MCR_HOME as the first argument.
# There is no need to pass the content of MCR_CACHE_ROOT as an argument to the
# to the run_appname.sh script since it is a variable that the Matlab runtime is aware of.
./run_appname.sh $MCR_HOME [arguments list]

# Preferably, tar-up (archive) all output files onto the shared scratch area
tar zcvf $HOME/Scratch/files_from_job_${JOB_ID}.tgz $TMPDIR

# Make sure you have given enough time for the copy to complete!

For any queries and problem reports, please contact rc-support@ucl.ac.uk.