Interfacing PC-based MATLAB directly to HPC resources

Abstract

Many DoD HPC users, particularly in the SIP area, run codes developed with MATLAB and related applications (MatlabMPI, StarP, pMatlab, etc.). There is a desire to run codes from a desktop instance of MATLAB and connect to and interact with codes running on HPC resources. The PET SIP team has developed and demonstrated technology that makes this possible. The SSH toolbox for MATLAB enables users to connect to and use HPC resources using SSH without leaving the MATLAB environment. The toolbox uses a freely available implementation of SSH, a modified version of which is also used by the DoD HPCMP. The SSH toolbox consists of a Windows DLL written in C, which is used by MATLAB to communicate with the SSH client. The toolbox provides simple MATLAB commands for users to connect to remote resources, run code, retrieve results and end the SSH session. The complexity of the DLL interface and most of the security needs are hidden from the user, making this a very easy to use and powerful toolbox. Since the main component of the toolbox is written is C and packaged as a DLL, the toolbox can also be extended to work with other programming languages such as Java, Python and Octave. MATLAB-style documentation for the toolbox also makes it easy to obtain help on various aspects of the toolbox and a GUI-based installer makes distribution easier. This technology provides a revolutionary way of providing support to the DoD. Software developers are now able to provide all the hooks to a complicated HPC environment, thus removing the burden of end users. © 2006 IEEE.