running embarassingly parallel simulations on a multicore machine using bash loops

embarassingly parallel: python experiment_all.py scans all these parameters:

1 for i in range(N):
2     if experiment[i] is not finished and not locked:
3         lock(experiment[i])
4         run(experiment[i])

to run this on 8 cores, bash is your friend (may also apply to *sh where * is either z, c, tc, ...)

for i in {1..8}; do cd /data/work/ && python experiment_all.py  & done

however, runnning them simultaneously may cause problems if the locking mechanism is not fast enough, so I introduce a random jitter

for i in {1..8}; do cd /data/work/ && sleep 0.$(( RANDOM%1000 )) ; python experiment_all.py  & done