Using MATLAB’s Parallel Processing Toolbox for Multi-CPU and Multi-GPU Accelerated FDTD Simulations

摘要

MATLAB is a good testbed for prototyping new FDTD techniques as it provides quick programming, debugging and visualization capabilities compared to lower level languages such as C or FORTRAN. However, the major disadvantage of using MATLAB is its slow execution. For faster simulations, one should use other programming languages like Fortran or C with CUDA when utilizing graphics processing units. Development of simulation codes using these other programming languages is not as easy as when using MATLAB. Thus the main objective of this paper is to investigate ways to increase the throughput of a fully functional finite difference time domain method coded in MATLAB to be able to simulate practical problems with visualization capabilities in reasonable time. We present simple ways to improve the efficiency of MATLAB simulations using the parallel toolbox along with the multi-core central processing units (CPUs) or the multiple graphics processing units (GPUs). Native and simple MATLAB constructs with no external dependencies or libraries and no expensive or complicated hardware acceleration units are used in the present development.