Technology
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| Q: |
Can I use Mathematica Personal Grid Edition for the same
calculations for which I use Mathematica? |
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Yes, you can. Because Mathematica Personal Grid Edition uses Mathematica as its primary
component, it has access to Mathematica's functionality. In
addition, Mathematica Personal Grid Edition has a
few functions that are not included with Mathematica.
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| Q: |
What kind of computations profit most from Mathematica Personal Grid Edition? |
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Computations that can be broken into smaller pieces and that don't involve
lots of communication overhead profit most. Examples of such computations
include running many scenarios of the same computation, such as random number
generation (e.g., Monte Carlo) or perturbation problems, and doing
independent searches of large numbers of parameter spaces or different cases.
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| Q: |
Will Mathematica Personal Grid Edition make all of my Mathematica
computations faster? |
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Not all Mathematica commands can be broken up
into pieces to distribute across a grid. Commands such as
Integrate, Solve, and NDSolve can be evaluated only
on a single kernel. However, some commands, such as Map and
Table, have parallel equivalents, such as ParallelMap and
ParallelTable. Also,
if a series of commands needs to be carried out, a set of separate
kernels can handle these tasks faster by having each kernel handle one
or more of the commands, rather than waiting for one kernel to finish all of
them. Where possible, ParallelEvaluate automatically tries to parallelize operations.
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| Q: |
How much faster will my programs run using
Mathematica Personal Grid Edition compared to Mathematica? |
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The speedup depends on the type of calculation being performed, the
efficiency of the algorithm, and the speed of your hardware. Because
this will vary on a case-by-case basis, it is not possible to provide
a number that would be true in all circumstances. In a best-case
scenario, the speedup would be linear--in other words, if you doubled
the number of CPUs, the speed would double. In most real-world cases there
is communication latency, and many problems do not parallelize well,
so the speedup will be less than linear. If a program is well
written, runs on fast hardware with low communication latency, and
parallelizes well, linear speedups are possible.
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| Q: |
Will Mathematica application packages work with
Mathematica Personal Grid Edition? |
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Yes, they will. You will need to have one copy of the application package per
process.
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| Q: |
Can I connect Mathematica Personal Grid Edition to a
database? |
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Yes, you can. Mathematica Personal Grid Edition
leverages Mathematica's built-in support for universal database
connectivity.
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| Q: |
On what types of systems will Mathematica Personal Grid Edition
run? |
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Mathematica Personal Grid Edition is supported on all platforms
on which Mathematica is supported, including
multi-CPU or multi-core machines. It is intended for use on a single
machine with up to four processors or cores.
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| Q: |
Is Mathematica Personal Grid Edition using
MPI? |
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No, it isn't. Mathematica Personal Grid Edition offers many of
the same features that were the goals of the MPI developers. However,
the messaging interface is optimized for communications
between Mathematica kernels and other programs that communicate
via the MathLink
API so as to avoid requiring large amounts of extra information with each
message or needing complex encoding or decoding of message headers.
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| Q: |
What happens if a kernel fails during the course of an
evaluation? |
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Mathematica Personal Grid Edition provides recovery methods
that redistribute remaining processes if a kernel failure occurs. Any
results that were expected from the failed kernel will be lost.
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| Q: |
How thoroughly has Mathematica Personal Grid Edition
been tested? |
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Mathematica is extensively tested by
Wolfram Research. Every week throughout the development process, it
is subjected to an extensive battery of manual and automated testing,
including comparisons with known results of nearly a half-million
computations (chosen from books of tables, bug reports, documented
behavior, and other Wolfram-Research-generated tests).
In addition, Mathematica's
ability to solve many problems in a variety of different ways allows
for self-checking within the system.
For these reasons, Mathematica is renowned as the
technical system delivering the most trustworthy and accurate
answers. Because Mathematica Personal Grid Edition
uses Mathematica as its primary component, Mathematica
Personal Grid Edition and Mathematica functionality have
been tested to the same extent.
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| Q: |
Does code written for Mathematica Personal Grid Edition run on gridMathematica? |
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Yes, it does. The underlying technology is the same for both
products, so code written for Mathematica Personal Grid Edition
is easily transitioned to gridMathematica and in many cases
requires no changes at all.
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Licensing
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| Q: |
If I currently own Mathematica, can I upgrade to Mathematica Personal Grid Edition? |
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Yes, you can. Contact Wolfram Research
or your reseller for more
information.
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| Q: |
If I currently own Mathematica Personal Grid Edition,
can I upgrade to gridMathematica? |
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Yes, you can. Contact Wolfram Research
or your reseller for more
information.
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| Q: |
Can I add Mathematica Personal Grid Edition to my
organization's current purchase program? |
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Yes, you can. Contact Wolfram Research
or your reseller for more
information.
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| Q: |
Can I use Mathematica application packages with
Mathematica Personal Grid Edition? |
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Yes, you can, but you will need to purchase one copy of the
application package for
each grid node.
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| Q: |
How many people can use Mathematica Personal Grid Edition simultaneously? |
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Each copy of Mathematica Personal Grid Edition comes with one
controlling process, so each installation of Mathematica Personal
Grid Edition can be used by one person at a time.
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| Q: |
Should I purchase Mathematica Personal Grid Edition or gridMathematica? |
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Mathematica Personal Grid Edition is intended for use on
individual computers with four processors or cores available. If you
have a computer, or set of computers, with more than four
processors you want to make use of, then
gridMathematica offers
increased scalability.
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Support and Training
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| Q: |
Does Wolfram Research offer a service contract for
Mathematica Personal Grid Edition? |
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Yes, we do. Mathematica Personal Grid Edition comes with a
one-year subscription to Premier
Service, renewable indefinitely.
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| Q: |
Is Mathematica Personal Grid Edition consulting available? |
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Yes, it is. Please see the list of accredited Mathematica consultants for details
and contact information.
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| Q: |
Does Wolfram Research offer Mathematica Personal Grid Edition training? |
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Yes, we do. Current courses that are relevant for anyone interested
in parallel computing with Mathematica and
Mathematica Personal Grid Edition include M225: Grid Computing
with Mathematica and M245: Parallel
Computation, and the free online seminar S17: Applied Parallel
Computation with gridMathematica. In addition, a host
of other courses are
offered pertaining to general Mathematica programming and use.
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