MATLAB for Signal Processing on Multiprocessors and Multicores

MATLAB is a popular choice for algorithm development in signal and image processing. While traditionally done using sequential MATLAB running on desktop systems, in recent years there has been a surge of interest in running MATLAB in parallel to take advantage of multiprocessor and multicore systems. In this article, we discuss three variations of multiprocessor parallel MATLAB, two of which are available as commercial, supported products. We also consider running MATLAB with key computations speeded up using multithreaded computations on multicore general-purpose graphical processing units (GPGPUs). Two signal processing kernels (fast Fourier transform (FFT) and convolution) and two full applications [synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and superconducting quantum interference devices (SQIF)] are used to illustrate the use of parallel MATLAB.