{"id":3266,"date":"2012-04-30T21:18:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=3266"},"modified":"2012-05-22T15:22:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T14:22:14","slug":"a-month-of-math-software-april-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=3266","title":{"rendered":"A Month of Math Software &#8211; April 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the 16th Month of Math Software where I take a tour around the news and new releases in the world of mathematical software.\u00a0 Thanks so much to this month&#8217;s contributors without whom I would really struggle to put this newsletter together.\u00a0 As always, the archives can be found at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?cat=47\">https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?cat=47<\/a> and if you have any news for next month then there are numerous ways in which to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?page_id=2055\">contact me<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Google Summer of Code<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The world of Open Source mathematical software stands to gain heavily from this year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/soc\/\">Google Summer of Code<\/a>.\u00a0 Projects include an attempt to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/project\/google\/gsoc2012\/gmazoyer\/35002\">port Scilab to Android<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/project\/google\/gsoc2012\/titusnicolae\/12001\"> improvements to symbolic expressions in Sage<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/project\/google\/gsoc2012\/pzagor\/13001\">aerospace<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/project\/google\/gsoc2012\/papriwalprateek\/32002\">signal processing<\/a> blocksets for Xcos,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/project\/google\/gsoc2012\/max_brister\/23001\"> Just In Time compilation for Octave<\/a> and many many more.\u00a0 See<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/projects\/list\/google\/gsoc2012\"> http:\/\/www.google-melange.com\/gsoc\/projects\/list\/google\/gsoc2012<\/a> for the full list of projects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mathematics on GP-GPUs (General Purpose &#8211; Graphical Processing Units)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An <a href=\"http:\/\/icl.cs.utk.edu\/magma\/news\/news.html?id=289\">OpenCL implementation of the GPU linear algebra library, MAGMA<\/a>, has been released.\u00a0 The practical upshot of this is that you can use GPU cards from manufacturers other than NVIDIA now.\u00a0 Version 0.1 Beta includes implementations of LU, QR, and Cholesky matrix factorisations.<\/li>\n<li>A beta version of <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.amd.com\/libraries\/appmathlibs\/Pages\/default.aspx\">AMD&#8217;s Accelerated Parallel Processing Math Libraries<\/a> has been released.Version 1.7 beta includes some new BLAS Level 2 and 3 functions and is required for the MAGMA release mentioned above.<\/li>\n<li>Version 2.1 of AccelerEyes superb Jacket Toolbox has been released (last month in fact but I missed it) and includes support for unconstrained optimisation!\u00a0 The full change-log can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.accelereyes.com\/wiki\/index.php\/Release_Notes\">wiki.accelereyes.com\/wiki\/index.php\/Release_Notes<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gpusystems.com\/index.aspx\">GPU Systems have released version 2.0 of their Libra SDK<\/a>.\u00a0 According to the website &#8216;Libra is a cross processor, cross platform, cross language &#8211; standard math library and runtime API &#8211; for software application development.&#8217;\u00a0 It supports both OpenCL and CUDA and multiple languages including\u00a0 C, C++, Java, C# and MATLAB.<span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: #ffffff; display: inline ! important; float: none;\"><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: #ffffff; display: inline ! important; float: none;\"> <\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.accelereyes.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/26\/benchmarking-kepler-gtx-680\/\">Benchmarking the new Kepler GTX680<\/a> &#8211; AccelerEyes compares NVIDIA&#8217;s new hardware with its old.\u00a0 The benchmarks are Matrix-Matrix Multiply, Fast Fourier Transform and sorting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Python<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Version 0.7.3 of Pandas has been released. According to the website, Pandas aims to become the most powerful and flexible open source data analysis \/ manipulation tool available in any language\u00a0 Go to <a href=\"http:\/\/pandas.pydata.org\/pandas-docs\/dev\/whatsnew.html\">http:\/\/pandas.pydata.org\/pandas-docs\/dev\/whatsnew.html<\/a> to see what&#8217;s new.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pandas.pydata.org\/pandas-docs\/dev\/whatsnew.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/images\/python\/scatter_matrix_ex.png\" alt=\"pandas scatter matrix\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Version 0.4 of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathics.org\/\">mathics<\/a> has been released. <em>&#8216;Mathics is a free, general-purpose online computer algebra system featuring Mathematica-compatible syntax and functions.&#8217; <\/em>The Mathics project is looking for more developers, contact <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/poeschko\">Jan P\u00f6schko<\/a> if you&#8217;re interested.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Sparse Linear Systems<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>PaStiX (<a href=\"http:\/\/pastix.gforge.inria.fr\/\">http:\/\/pastix.gforge.inria.fr<\/a>) is a scientific library that provides a high performance parallel solver for very large sparse linear systems based on direct methods and version 5.2 was released this month.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>MATLAB add-ons<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Version 2.1 of LAMG (Lean Algebraic Multigrid) was released this month.\u00a0 LAMG is a fast graph Laplacian solver. It can solve Ax=b in O(m) time and storage, where A is the graph Laplacian of a weighted undirected graph with m edges.\u00a0 Free MATLAB code download: <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/lamg\/\">http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/lamg\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Version 4.2 of Chebfun is now available from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maths.ox.ac.uk\/chebfun\/\">http:\/\/www.maths.ox.ac.uk\/chebfun\/<\/a>.<span> <\/span>Chebfun is an open-source system written in Matlab that overloads Matlab&#8217;s operations for vectors and matrices to analogous operations for functions and operators.\u00a0 <span> <\/span>For an overview of what Chebfun can do, take a look at the collection of more than 100 Chebfun Examples posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maths.ox.ac.uk\/chebfun\/examples\/\">http:\/\/www.maths.ox.ac.uk\/chebfun\/examples\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>LAPACK &#8211; The standard for Linear Algebra<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>LAPACK has seen a bug-fix release.\u00a0 See what&#8217;s new in version 3.4.1 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netlib.org\/lapack\/lapack-3.4.1.html\">http:\/\/www.netlib.org\/lapack\/lapack-3.4.1.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>SPSS In decline?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.revolutionanalytics.com\/2012\/04\/rs-continued-growth-in-academia.html\">this blog<\/a>, SPSS is in steep decline with the open source language, R, taking up the slack.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.methodspace.com\/profiles\/blogs\/spss-is-not-dead\">This blog<\/a>, however, isn&#8217;t so sure!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the 16th Month of Math Software where I take a tour around the news and new releases in the world of mathematical software.\u00a0 Thanks so much to this month&#8217;s contributors without whom I would really struggle to put this newsletter together.\u00a0 As always, the archives can be found at https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?cat=47 and if you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math-software","category-month-of-math-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3swhs-QG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3266"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4321,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions\/4321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}