Interactive MatLab (Web)

Opening MatLab Form

  • The first step is to select the Interactive apps and then click the MatLab (Web) GUI in the Open OnDemand dashboard.

  • Then you will see a form which needs to be filled to launch the MatLab GUI on compute nodes.

MatLab Form

Partition

  • Partitions are work queues that has computational nodes in it to run the jobs. The partitions available in Discovery are cblab,cfdlab, iiplab, interactive, and normal.

  • However, you will see only the list of authorized partitions available for your Discovery account and hence, you won’t see the partitions which you don’t have authorization in the select dropdown.

  • Select one of the partitions where you want to submit your job. Refer to the page → Partitions in Discovery to select the ideal partition for your job.

  • By Default, partition is set to interactive.

  • Backfill partition is also enabled to launch MatLab GUI through the interactive session. However, jobs on Backfill are subject to being stopped and requeued. Hence, you need to fill the last form field with the MatLab command if you want to launch MatLab in Backfill.

For NMSU OnDemand interactive apps, Backfill partition is only available in MatLab (Xfce).

Walltime(Hours)

  • Sets the Walltime for your job. The job gets killed if the Walltime you set gets elapsed.

    Partition Max Hours

    backfill

    336

    cblab

    168

    cfdlab

    168

    iiplab

    168

    interactive

    24

    normal

    168

CPUs(Threads)

  • Sets the Number of CPUs(Threads) for the job. The below table shows the maximum limit for CPU threads for each partition. The default and minimum value is 1 CPU thread.

    Partition Max Limit

    backfill

    60

    cblab

    60

    cfdlab

    52

    iiplab

    52

    interactive

    16

    normal

    124

Memory (GB/Gigabytes)

  • Sets the memory for the job in terms of GB. The memory you select is available to all assigned threads for the job. The below table shows the maximum memory limit for each partition which can be requested for the job. The default and minimum value is 1 GB.

Partition Max Memory Limit(GB)

backfill

490

cblab

364

cfdlab

175

iiplab

175

interactive

64

normal

3000

  • MatLab Parallel Kit, or workers, requires Simultaneous Multithreading(SMT)/HT to be disabled. Hence, SMT is disabled for MatLab by default.

GPUs

  • To enable the GPU selection, you need to choose one of the following partitions: cfdlab, iiplab, interactive, normal. Only these partitions have GPUs and if you select any of the partitions, you can see the GPUs dropdown enabled.

    Parameter #GPU

    Min Limit

    0

    Max Limit

    2

Node Selection

This is an optional node selection feature for submissions to Slurm. It allows users to specify a particular node or any node with specific feature flags.

Selection Options

There are four available options for node selection:

  1. Disabled: This is the default setting. When "Disabled" is selected, the application will not send any specific node preferences to Slurm during job submission.

  2. Node List: With this option, users can specify a particular node (one single node) where the job should run.

  3. Node Features (--constraint): Users can select this option if they want to run their job on any node that meets a specific feature.

  4. Node Features (--prefer): This option is similar to the "--constraint" option, but it only indicates a preference. If it’s not available, it might be scheduled elsewhere.

Email Address

  • If you want to get notified via email when the job starts/fails/ends, enter the email address associated with the Discovery account.

  • You can leave the text field blank if you don’t want job notifications.

Submission Environment

You can select your desired submission environment from the drop down list. For example, to use an Apptainer image, select the Container option.

Submission Environment

  • Basic Modules

  • Basic Container

This option allows you to launch the interactive application with the default software modules.

Instead of you using Envirumental Modules, you can use an Apptainer/Singularity Container. You just need to select the appropriate SIF image.

Container

Launching the Interactive Session

  • Once all the form fields are set, you can click the Launch button. The interactive session will be launched and you will see the below output.

MatLab Output

  • The above output shows that the interactive MatLab session has been launched successfully. You will see the Connect button only if the resources you have requested becomes available. Else, you might need to wait for some more minutes for the resources allocation and then the Launch MatLab button appears.

  • To open MatLab Web click the Connect button.

The interactive session won’t be launched if you try to submit your job to the partition that you don’t have access to. You will get the following error message → Batch job submission failed: User’s group not permitted to use this partition. Also, the page gets reloaded and you need to select the value for the form fields again since the form gets reset.

Opening MatLab Graphical User Interface

  • On clicking the Connect button, the MatLab Web opens in a new tab.

ood-MatLabgui-output.png

  • The above output shows that the MatLab Web has been launched.

Killing the Interactive Session

  • To kill the interactive session, you can simply press the close icon of the MatLab GUI window. This will close the session and the cluster resources get freed.

  • Another way to kill the session is to go to the My Interactive sessions tab and select the Delete button of the current interactive session.

MatLab delete session

Whenever you are done with the work, it’s always recommended to kill/delete the interactive session running on the compute nodes and free the resources.