Mplus vs. Stata for Heavy Computation

Both Stata and Mplus have multiple processor support. Stata/MP is licensed on per CPU basis, while Mplus is licensed on per machine basis, no matte how many processors a machine has. Combining a non-MP version of Stata and Mplus seems to provide an ideal solution for researchers who have to deal with complicated statistical models, especially those involve latent variables. One can use Stata for all the data manipulation and some light duty estimation, while relying on Mplus (on a fast core duo machine) for the heavy computation. The Stata ado file "stata2mplus.ado", provided by the ATS computing at UCLA provides an ideal solution to bridge the two packages.