MATLAB is running really slow.

Hello everyone my MATLAB is running really really slow. I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro 13' with OSX 10.9.2 with MATLAB R2012a. Every time I try to run a script I get the little blue ball and after a couple of seconds my laptop fan starts to hum like it's really struggling with trying to process the command. Any suggestions on how to fix and/or improve this problem.

[per isakson]

• "a script" is that a specific script?
• "hum" is that fan or disk?

[Luis]

A script: like any particular code that I write it takes quite awhile for it to be executed and sometimes it doesn't execute when the code is quite large and I have to force quit MATLAB and try to execute it again.

hum: like from the fan on the laptop like when it's overheating.

[per isakson]

Thus "really really slow" applies to running your scripts. (The bench result isn't that bad.)

"really really slow" compared to what? Are your expectations realistic?

Did you try to analyze the execution with the function, profile ? Maybe your script can be modified to run much faster.

[Luis]

yes to the scripts they use to take about no more then a second or so like the results and/or a graph would just pop up and now its like it stalls take seconds to calculate and sometimes it doesn't complete the task and oh I thought that the results from the bench that I should be up higher on the graph. and no I have not tried to analyze the execution with the function profile I'll see what that tells me

[per isakson]

Since I know nothing about your scripts I cannot guess what the problem is.

profile will hopefully spot the lines of code which takes so long.

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Did you run

    bench

? How does it rank your system?

Do you have memory enough for your test?

[Luis]

no I had not and I got this EDU>> bench

ans =

    0.1898    0.1645    0.1604    0.2052    0.9029    1.2197
and I have about 346 GB of space on my laptop and all of my files are an external drive.

[José-Luis]

Please put your files in a local folder and try again. IO might be a bottleneck.

[Luis]

Sorry I meant that all of my codes that I'm running are on an external drive

[José-Luis]

Yes, please try putting them in your hard drive and run from there.

[Luis]

Oh ok I thought that it would be best to keep them off the laptop to not affect the speed

[per isakson]

The bench result looks plausible to me.

[Luis]

could you elaborate?

[per isakson]

I know little about MacBook. I googled. Speed a third of that of the top machine seems plausible.

However, the bench result has nothing to do with the problem you encounter.

Answer 2

[Wonsang You]

If you had a parallel computing toolbox as well as its compatible hardware (either CPUs or GPUs), you could be helpful to accelerate the speed.