How to take advantage of computer?

I'm using a HP Z840 workstation, it's a bit of a beast with two processors (E5-2643) and 128GB RAM. Is there anyway to speed up Matlab processes with this? Or does matlab just run as fast as it can? I'm aware the RAM lets me run larger arrays but is there anything else I can do? Or is it all done by default?

[Cedric]

In your command window, type

 ver

and check out if you have the parallel toolbox. It will be an entry like

 Parallel Computing Toolbox                    Version X.Y         (R201RR)

If so, it would be worth investing a little time studying what this toolbox offers (explicit parallelism), as mentioned by Edric below.

[Ben Sheard]

Thank you for the clarification, I'll take a look

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

MATLAB runs as fast as it can. MATLAB will automatically use parallel computing for sufficiently large mathematical calculations that match some patterns.

Sometimes it helps to explicitly code parallel programs using parfor or spmd or similar. Not as often as you might guess at first, though: the communication overhead can make it slower.

[Edric Ellis]

Just to be clear: when Walter says "MATLAB will automatically use parallel computing ..." - this means multi-threading inside a single MATLAB process, and this capability ships with the base MATLAB product.

The explicit parallelism via parfor etc. is available only available when you have Parallel Computing Toolbox installed too.

[Walter Roberson]

You should consider reading Yair's book "Accelerating MATLAB Performance book"

[Ben Sheard]

Thank you for the answers, i'll look into it!