Re: running multiple mathkernel's
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg90477] Re: running multiple mathkernel's
- From: enzotib <enzotib at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:37:21 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <g4vjkb$9c3$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 8 Lug, 13:38, Bob F <deepyog... at gmail.com> wrote: > Is there a way to automatically have Mathematica v6 run a separate > MathKernel for two notebooks so that they could run concurrently? I > was running a really long calculation that ended up taking about an > hour, and so opened up another notebook to do something else while I > waited for the other notebook to finish running. I thought that > Mathematica would run the second MathKernel that is available for this > second notebook, but the only thing that happened in the second > notebook was wait for the first one to finish. > > So I started looking into setting up a second kernel via the > "Evaluation/Kernel Configuration Options" menu item, and added a > second MathKernel to automatically launch on front end startup, > thinking that Mathematica would use this spare MathKernel on the > second notebook, but it didn't. I could see the two MathKernel > processes running, but only one of them would actually run all the > notebooks that I tried to run at the same time. > > What I ended up doing was manually assigning a kernel to the second > notebook with the "Evaluation/Notebook's Kernel", and then finally it > would run at the same time as the other. I tried this on both Mac and > Windows versions of Mathematica V6 with similar behavior and results. > > After spending the time in getting all this done, I thought surely > there must be a way for Mathematica to automatically use as many > MathKernel's as needed for running more than one notebook at a time, > within the limit's of your licenses. With a normal Mathematica license > you can run up to two MathKernel processes and one front end > Mathematica processor. I even thought that if you had two licenses on > two different computers that you could conceivably run 4 MathKernel's, > but this is apparently only possible if you have something called > network licensing, which costs more money than a normal license. There > is also something called PersonalGrid that has up to 5 MathKernals (1 > master plus 4 computation kernels) but am guessing it would have the > same issue of having to manually assign a kernel to a notebook, so > each notebook program could conceivably run at the same time. Does > anyone know if this is the case or not? If not how does it really > work? > > What is the purpose of having two MathKernel processes as part of the > license if you have to go thru all the extra work of manual > assignment? Why doesn't Mathematica do this automatically for you?? I > had a suggestion that I should run two copies of Mathematica, but that > seemed way to much overhead for what I wanted to do. Is this what most > people do who have a similar situation of one really long calculation > and wanting to do other work in another notebook while waiting for the > long one to finish? > > Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this association of > notebooks to MathKernel processes so that they could be running at the > same time in some sort of automatic fashion and avoid having to > manually manage it like I did?? It would seem that with multi-core and > multi-processor systems becoming more common that this would be of > interest to more and more people. Any comments or suggestions of how > this works in Mathematica? > > Thanks... > > -Bob Create a new kernel through Kernel->Kernel Configuration Options->Add "KernelName" Next, associate a kernel with the notebook through Kernel->Notebook Kernel->"KernelName" -- enzo