REMINDER: Important change to MATLAB on Biowulf coming in June 2016

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Starting in June 2016, the Biowulf system will be configured
so that MATLAB licenses can only be used for interactive 
programming sessions. MATLAB licenses will no longer be 
allocated to batch jobs, but compiled MATLAB code will still 
run via batch. Octave has recently been installed on the 
system to provide users with an additional alternative to 
running un-compiled MATLAB code.

The reasons for this change
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License limits restrict Biowulf users to running only a 
small number of simultaneous MATLAB jobs, so users do not 
receive much benefit from running un-compiled MATLAB code 
in batch mode on Biowulf. Users must specify the licenses 
they need when submitting their jobs, and mistakes can lead 
to jobs failing with license errors.  To make matters worse, 
one user's mistake can cause another user's jobs to fail.  
(See hpc.nih.gov/docs/licenses#allocating for details.)  
After trying several approaches, the HPC staff has concluded 
that the best solution is to reserve all licenses for 
interactive use and to require non-interactive MATLAB jobs 
to be compiled.

What this means for you
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If you always use the MATLAB interactive GUI to run your 
code on Helix, Felix, Biowulf, or Sciware, this change will 
not affect you.  But if you use swarm or sbatch to schedule 
non-interactive MATLAB jobs containing un-compiled code, 
this change will affect your workflow.  You will now need to 
compile your code before running it in batch mode.  This 
will allow you to run hundreds or thousands of instances of 
your code simultaneously, and will also allow your code to 
run safely without the possibility of interference with or 
by other users' jobs.  To learn more about compiling your 
MATLAB code to remove the need for licenses, see the 
following links:

Compiling Matlab code:
https://hpc.nih.gov/apps/Matlab_compiler.html

Video tutorial on compiling workflow:
https://hpc.nih.gov/training/handouts/MATLAB_on_Biowulf_vid.html

Octave on Biowulf:
https://hpc.nih.gov/apps/octave.html