5.3 Windows Step-by-Step Guide

This section outlines the steps necessary on most Windows systems to set up Dynare for parallel execution.

1. Write a configuration file containing the options you want. A mimimum working example setting up a cluster consisting of two local CPU cores that allows for e.g. running two Monte Carlo Markov Chains in parallel is shown below.
2. Save the configuration file somwhere. The name and file ending do not matter if you are providing it with the conffile command line option. The only restrictions are that the path must be a valid filename, not contain non-alpha-numeric characters, and not contain any whitespaces. For the configuration file to be accessible without providing an explicit path at the command line, you must save it under the name dynare.ini into your user account’s Application Data folder.
3. Install the PSTools from https://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals/pstools.aspx to your system, e.g. into C:\PSTools.
4. Set the Windows System Path to the PSTools-folder (e.g. using something along the line of pressing Windows Key+Pause to open the System Configuration, then go to Advanced -> Environment Variables -> Path, see also https://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals/pstools.aspx).
5. Restart your computer to make the path change effective.
6. Open Matlab and type into the command window

   !psexec

   This executes the psexec.exe of the PSTools on your system and shows whether Dynare will be able to locate it. If Matlab complains at this stage, you did not correctly set your Windows system path for the PSTools-folder.

7. If psexec.exe was located in the previous step, a popup will show up, asking for confirmation of the license agreement. Confirm this copyright notice of psexec (this needs to be done only once). After this, Dynare should be ready for parallel execution.
8. Call Dynare on your mod-file invoking the parallel option and providing the path to your configuration file with the conffile-option (if you did not save it as %APPDATA%\dynare.ini in step 2 where it should be detected automatically)

       dynare ls2003 parallel conffile='C:\Users\Dynare~1\parallel\conf_file.ini'
       

   Please keep in mind that no whitespaces or names longer than 8 characters are allowed in the conffile-path. The 8 character restriction can be circumvented by using the tilde Windows path notation as in the above example.

Example

#cluster needs to always be defined first
[cluster] 
#Provide a name for the cluster
Name=Local
#declare the nodes being member of the cluster
Members=n1 

#declare nodes (they need not all be part of a cluster)
[node] 
#name of the node
Name=n1 
#name of the computer (localhost for the current machine)
ComputerName=localhost 
#cores to be included from this node
CPUnbr=[1:2]
#path to matlab.exe; on Windows, Matlab's bin folder is in the system path 
#so we only need to provide the name of the exe file
MatlabOctavePath=matlab 
#Dynare path you are using
DynarePath=C:\dynare\2016-05-10\matlab