{"id":3794,"date":"2011-09-02T23:56:31","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T22:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=3794"},"modified":"2011-09-10T10:04:58","modified_gmt":"2011-09-10T09:04:58","slug":"a-month-of-math-software-august-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=3794","title":{"rendered":"A Month of Math Software &#8211; August 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to August&#8217;s &#8216;A Month of Math Software&#8217; where I look at everything from blog posts about math libraries through to the latest releases.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?cat=47\">Click here<\/a> for earlier articles in the series.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mathematical software packages<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/maxima\/files\/\">Maxima<\/a>, the venerable (it is based on a 1960s codebase called Macsyma) open source computer algebra package has been upgraded to version 5.25.1.\u00a0 See the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/images\/maxima\/Maxima_changelog_5.25.txt\">change-log here<\/a>.\u00a0 Download it from <a href=\"http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/maxima\/files\/\">Sourceforge<\/a> and check out a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=2079\">Maxima tutorial (how to plot direction fields for first order ODEs) <\/a>right here at WalkingRandomly.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sagemath.org\/\">SAGE<\/a> is arguably the best general purpose mathematics package in the open source world and it saw an update to version 4.7.1 this month.\u00a0 See what got changed at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sagemath.org\/mirror\/src\/changelogs\/sage-4.7.1.txt\">http:\/\/www.sagemath.org\/mirror\/src\/changelogs\/sage-4.7.1.txt<\/a>.\u00a0 I played with an old version a little while ago (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=1879\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=2006\">here<\/a>) and am still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=2091\">offering a bounty<\/a> for anyone who can add a certain piece of functionality to this product.<\/li>\n<li>Next up is a free (as in beer) package from Microsoft called <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/downloads\/bc38771b-dc48-475b-8d18-7fe87e1bc2a1\/default.aspx\">Sho<\/a> which saw an upgrade to version 2.0.5 this month.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll let Microsoft themselves tell you what it is:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>&#8220;Sho is an interactive environment for data analysis and scientific  computing that lets you seamlessly connect scripts (in IronPython) with  compiled code (in .NET) to enable fast and flexible prototyping.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/downloads\/bc38771b-dc48-475b-8d18-7fe87e1bc2a1\/default.aspx\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/images\/sho\/sho_console.jpg\" alt=\"Sho console\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It certainly looks very interesting with features such as <a href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/downloads\/6f5d2719-5efc-4ab5-808e-a9229166672b\/\">direct integration with Azure<\/a> (Microsoft&#8217;s cloud computing product), <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/natbr\/archive\/2011\/01\/28\/optimization-modeling-using-solver-foundation-and-sho.aspx\">Optimization<\/a> and loads more.\u00a0 Let me know what you think of it if you try it out.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>IBM&#8217;s SPSS Statistics is now at version 20.\u00a0 Take a look at what&#8217;s new in this commercial package at <a href=\"http:\/\/www-01.ibm.com\/software\/analytics\/spss\/statistics\/resources\/whats-new.html\">http:\/\/www-01.ibm.com\/software\/analytics\/spss\/statistics\/resources\/whats-new.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Mathematical Software Libraries<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/developer.amd.com\/libraries\/acml\/downloads\/pages\/default.aspx\">The AMD Core Math Library<\/a> was upgraded to version 5.0 this month.\u00a0 I think the following is the complete change-log\n<ul>\n<li>DGEMM and SGEMM have been tuned for AMD Family 15h processors.\u00a0 These take advantage of AVX and FMA-4 instructions to achieve high efficiency using either one or both threads of a compute unit.<\/li>\n<li> The Fortran code base for the library is compiled with AVX and FMA-4 flags to support the AMD Family 15h processors.\u00a0 This library will not run on processors that do not support AVX and FMA-4.\u00a0 The package includes legacy libraries with SSE\/SSE2 instructions suitable for use on AMD Family 10h and AMD Family 0fh processors.<\/li>\n<li>New 2D and 3D real-to-complex FFT functions have been introduced.\u00a0 Included are samples demonstrating how to use the new functions.<\/li>\n<li>The L&#8217;Ecuyer, Whichmann-Hill, and Mersenne Twister random number generator have been updated to improve performance on all processor types.<\/li>\n<li>The vector math library dependency has been removed from the library, and libacml_mv has been removed from the build.\u00a0 These AMD math functions are available as a separate download from the AMD web page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>While on the subject of the ACML, <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.amd.com\/libraries\/acml\/downloads\/pages\/default.aspx\">check out this interview<\/a> about the library with Chip Freitag, one of its developers, that was recorded earlier this month.<\/li>\n<li>AMD have also released version 1.4 of the <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.amd.com\/libraries\/appmathlibs\/Pages\/default.aspx\">AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing Math Libraries (APPML)<\/a>.\u00a0 This is an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/OpenCL\">OpenCL<\/a> library aimed at <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Graphics_processing_unit\">GPUs<\/a>.\u00a0 As far as I can tell, this is just a bug fix release and so there are no new routines available.<\/li>\n<li>Jack Dongarra et al have moved their linear algebra library for heterogeneous\/hybrid architectures, <a href=\"http:\/\/icl.cs.utk.edu\/magma\/\">MAGMA<\/a>, from release candidate 5 to a full version 1.0 release.\u00a0 Roughly speaking, you can think of this project as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netlib.org\/lapack\/\">LAPACK<\/a> for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nvidia.com\/object\/cuda_home_new.html\">CUDA GPUs<\/a> (although this scope will probably widen in the future).\u00a0 I believe that it is used in products such as MATLAB&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathworks.co.uk\/products\/parallel-computing\/index.html\">parallel computing toolbox<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accelereyes.com\/\">Accelereyes&#8217; Jacket<\/a> (<strong>Correction:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve since learned that Jacket uses <a href=\"http:\/\/www.culatools.com\/\">CULA<\/a> and not MAGMA) among others.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li><strong>Odds and Ends<\/strong><\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Intel have come up with a new hardware-based random number generator.\u00a0 Read about it at <a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/computing\/hardware\/behind-intels-new-randomnumber-generator\/\">http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/computing\/hardware\/behind-intels-new-randomnumber-generator\/<\/a> I wonder if hardware based generators will ever replace pseudo random number generators for simulation work?<\/li>\n<li>Finally, William Hart released a new version of <a href=\"http:\/\/wehart.blogspot.com\/2011\/07\/we-are-pleased-to-announce-release-of.html\">Coopr<\/a> back in July but I didn&#8217;t learn about it in time to get it into July&#8217;s edition of Month of Math Software.\u00a0 So, I&#8217;m telling you about it now (more accurately, I&#8217;m quoting William).\u00a0<em> &#8216;Coopr is a collection of Python software packages that supports a diverse set of  optimization capabilities for formulating and analyzing optimization  models&#8217;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for this month.\u00a0 Thanks to everyone who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?page_id=2055\">contacted me<\/a> with news items, this series would be a lot more difficult to compile without you.\u00a0 If you have found something interesting in the world of mathematical software then feel free to let me know and I&#8217;ll include it in a future edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to August&#8217;s &#8216;A Month of Math Software&#8217; where I look at everything from blog posts about math libraries through to the latest releases.\u00a0 Click here for earlier articles in the series. Mathematical software packages Maxima, the venerable (it is based on a 1960s codebase called Macsyma) open source computer algebra package has been upgraded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-month-of-math-software"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3swhs-Zc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794","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=3794"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3869,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions\/3869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}