Parallel Computing toolBox : Number of Workers

Hi, had a doubt regarding parallel Computing toolbox, my workstation has 6 cores and 12 logical processors. how many workers can I run on my system using Parallel Computing Toolbox. Also if I have a Distributed Computing license will it be more time and cost effective to run on a cluster of laptop rather than running on a single machine?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/80129-definitive-answer-for-hyperthreading-and-the-parallel-computing-toolbox-pct

Clusters of laptops can be extremely effective for some kinds of tasks, but it depends what is being done. One thing to remember about clusters is that communications with the clusters is much more "expensive" than keeping everything on one system. If there needs to be a lot of data exchanged or there is continual data exchange (because the work unit size is too small) then you start needing high speed communications -- good ethernet cards, gigabit ethernet, quality ethernet switches, possibly jumbo frames. [For example in my home office, it turns out that my communications bottleneck is my firewall / switch, which does do gigabit, but can only run about half the rate of my broadband connection. :( ]