How to release/unselect GPU device?

Once I use a GPU function such as gpuDevice, my GTX580 GPU card locks into the highest performance mode and can only be released by selecting another GPU (which then is also locked into that highest mode) or restarting Matlab. I do a lot of remote computations on my computer and if a Matlab instance is unresponsive to the remote terminal, the heat on my performance locked GPU is just rising constantly. Once Matlab is closed the GPU returns to the lowest power state.

Question: Is there a Matlab command to actually release or deselect a GPU device without closing out of Matlab?

Related software: Matlab 2011a Linux 64bit, Parallel Computing

Answer 1

[Edric Ellis]

Unfortunately, your observation is correct that in R2011a, there is no way to deselect all GPU devices.

In later releases, one can use

gpuDevice([])

to deselect all GPU devices.

Answer 2

[Wolfgang]

I found one workaround to do this is by starting GPU devices only from within Matlab workers ('labs'). Once the matlabpool is closed and the workers are terminated, GPU devices associated with those workers are also released.