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Concepts of Parallel Computing in Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox

Subtleties in Parallel Computing

There are two main subtleties in parallel computations:

Vocabulary for Parallel Computation

  • worker — An independent MATLAB® session that runs code distributed by the client.

  • client — The MATLAB session with which you interact, and that distributes jobs to workers.

  • parfor — A Parallel Computing Toolbox™ function that distributes independent code segments to workers (see Working with parfor).

  • random stream — A pseudorandom number generator, and the sequence of values it generates. MATLAB implements random streams with the RandStream class.

  • reproducible computation — A computation that can be exactly replicated, even in the presence of random numbers (see Reproducibility in Parallel Statistical Computations).