Hello Colin,
> I was wondering if anyone had working accelaration mex files for SPM8
> (or experience with such a setup), which utilize MATLAB's parallel
> computing and NVIDIA graphics cards. As we setup our new machine, we're
> debating the purchase of a graphics card.
I have been thinking along the same lines and have included a
CUDA-capable card in my new machine. Matlab's parallel computing toolbox
is configured to make use of such a card, so if it finds one, it may use
it without you realizing. You can also explicitly make use of such
capabilities by assigning a computation to the graphics card instead of
the CPU (doc gpuArray). There is also an open source project called
GPUmat (available on sourceforge), but I have not seen dramatic
increases in performance in casual testing.
That being said, I have been completely unsuccessful in compiling CUDA
code, despite installing Visual Studio Professional, Windows SDK, CUDA
SDK, new drivers, CUDA toolkit etc. several times over. Yeah yeah, I
know, the solution to Windows problems is reinstalling Linux, but
browsing the web it seems I am not the only one who is having a hard
time. It looks like Matlab is not quite ready for this, but they are
trying (they bought accelereyes to this effect, making them stop their
own Matlab GPU solution, jacket). With future revisions, I would expect
Matlab to support CUDA even more seamlessly out of the box.
So bottomline, I think investing in a CUDA capable card may not double
your speed right now, but could in the future. There are some cool
examples on the file exchange, demonstrating the increase in performance
if you have simple calculations repeated over and over again due to the
massive use of parallel threads on the GPU. Sounds like something we
could use :)
Cheers,
Marko
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PD Dr. med. Marko Wilke
Facharzt für Kinder- und Jugendmedizin
Leiter, Experimentelle Pädiatrische Neurobildgebung
Universitäts-Kinderklinik
Abt. III (Neuropädiatrie)
Marko Wilke, MD, PhD
Pediatrician
Head, Experimental Pediatric Neuroimaging
University Children's Hospital
Dept. III (Pediatric Neurology)
Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 1
D - 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Tel. +49 7071 29-83416
Fax +49 7071 29-5473
[log in to unmask]
http://www.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/kinder/epn/
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