{"id":4867,"date":"2013-04-03T17:03:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T16:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4867"},"modified":"2013-04-03T17:04:27","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T16:04:27","slug":"a-month-of-math-software-march-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4867","title":{"rendered":"A Month of Math Software &#8211; March 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the latest edition of A Month of Math Software where I look back over the last month and report on all that is new and shiny in the world of mathematical software.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve recently restarted work after the Easter break and so it seems fitting that I offer you all <a href=\"http:\/\/vis.supstat.com\/2013\/03\/draw-easter-eggs\/\">Easter Eggs courtesy of Lijia Yu and R<\/a>.\u00a0 Enjoy!<\/p>\n<p><strong>General purpose mathematical systems<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Python-based computer algebra system, Sage, is now at version 5.8. \u00a0Take a look at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sagemath.org\/mirror\/src\/changelogs\/sage-5.8.txt\">http:\/\/www.sagemath.org\/mirror\/src\/changelogs\/sage-5.8.txt<\/a>\u00a0to see what&#8217;s new<\/li>\n<li>Version 17 of the commercial computer algebra system, Maple, has been released. \u00a0There are many <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/products\/maple\/new_features\/\">new features<\/a> including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/products\/maple\/new_features\/signal_processing.aspx\">new signal processing functions<\/a>, massive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/products\/maple\/new_features\/performance.aspx\">performance enhancements<\/a> and something completely new called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/products\/maple\/new_features\/mobius.aspx\">The M\u00f6bius Project!<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Every six months we get a new MATLAB release and March brought us 2013a.\u00a0 I&#8217;m always made a little happier when The Mathworks reduce their toolbox count by combining products and this time they&#8217;ve come good by combining The Fixed-Point Toolbox and Simulink Fixed Point products into the new <a href=\"www.mathworks.co.uk\/products\/fixed-point-designer\/index.html?s_tid=OIT_3649\">Fixed Point Designer <\/a>.\u00a0 An overview of other changes can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathworks.co.uk\/company\/newsroom\/MathWorks-Announces-Release-2013a-of-the-MATLAB-and-Simulink-Product-Families.html\">http:\/\/www.mathworks.co.uk\/company\/newsroom\/MathWorks-Announces-Release-2013a-of-the-MATLAB-and-Simulink-Product-Families.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>The almost continuously updated Euler Math Toolbox is now at 21.5.\u00a0 As ever, all of the updates and improvements can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/euler.rene-grothmann.de\/Programs\/Changes.html\">http:\/\/euler.rene-grothmann.de\/Programs\/Changes.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Magma is now at <a href=\"http:\/\/magma.maths.usyd.edu.au\/magma\/releasenotes\/2\/19\/4\/\">version 2.19-4<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>MATLAB add-ons<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advanpix.com\/\">multiprecision MATLAB toolbox<\/a> from Advanpix has been upgraded to version 3.4.3.3431 with the addition of multidimensional arrays.<\/li>\n<li>The superb, free <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.maths.ox.ac.uk\/chebfun\/\">chebfun<\/a> project has now been extended to 2 dimensions with the release of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.maths.ox.ac.uk\/chebfun\/chebfun2\/\">chebfun2<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>GPU accelerated computation<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Magma is a GPU accelerated linear algebra library and there is now a beta version for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intel.co.uk\/content\/www\/us\/en\/high-performance-computing\/high-performance-xeon-phi-coprocessor-brief.html\">Intel Xeon Phi<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/icl.cs.utk.edu\/magma\/news\/news.html?id=315\">http:\/\/icl.cs.utk.edu\/magma\/news\/news.html?id=315<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Stream Computing are compiling a list of <a href=\"http:\/\/streamcomputing.eu\/knowledge\/for-developers\/opencl-wrappers\/\">OpenCL wrappers for various platforms and languages<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>AccelerEyes have published a couple of articles demonstrating how to use their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accelereyes.com\/products\/arrayfire\">ArrayFire<\/a> product to accelerate calculations using <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Graphics_processing_unit\">GPUs<\/a>. In March they brought us <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.accelereyes.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/06\/arrayfire-examples-part-2-of-8-benchmarks\/\">Benchmarks<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.accelereyes.com\/blog\/\">Financial<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/cupoisson\/\">CuPoisson v1<\/a> has been released.\u00a0 &#8220;<em>CuPoisson is a GPU implementation of the 2D fast Poisson solver using CUDA. The method solves the discrete Poisson equation on a rectangular grid, assuming zero Dirichlet boundary conditions. <\/em>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Statistics and visualisation\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Version 3.0 of R was released today!\u00a0 A major change is that full 64bit vector support is now enabled meaning the end to the 2 billion row limit in data frames&#8230;bring on the big data! \u00a0Full details at <a href=\"https:\/\/stat.ethz.ch\/pipermail\/r-announce\/2013\/000561.html\">https:\/\/stat.ethz.ch\/pipermail\/r-announce\/2013\/000561.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Pandas, the data-analysis package for Python, has had a major update.\u00a0 Version 0.11 includes lots of new stuff which you can read about at <a href=\"http:\/\/pandas.pydata.org\/pandas-docs\/dev\/whatsnew.html\">http:\/\/pandas.pydata.org\/pandas-docs\/dev\/whatsnew.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Matplotlib, the standard mathematical plotting library for Python, has been updated to version 1.2.1.\u00a0 This is just a bug-fix release; all the new user-visible functionality came in v1.2 which you can <a href=\"http:\/\/matplotlib.org\/1.2.1\/users\/whats_new.html#new-in-matplotlib-1-2\">read about<\/a> here.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnuplot.info\/\">GNUPlot<\/a>, the venerable plotting package from from the GNU Project, has been updated to version 4.6.2.\u00a0 A complete list of changes is at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnuplot.info\/announce_4.6.2.txt\">http:\/\/www.gnuplot.info\/announce_4.6.2.txt<\/a><\/li>\n<li>A new version of the <a href=\"http:\/\/pdl.perl.org\/\">Perl Data Language (PDL)<\/a> has been made available.\u00a0 See what&#8217;s new in version 2.006 at <a href=\"http:\/\/mailman.jach.hawaii.edu\/pipermail\/perldl\/2013-March\/007803.html\">http:\/\/mailman.jach.hawaii.edu\/pipermail\/perldl\/2013-March\/007803.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Statisticsblog.com <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statisticsblog.com\/2013\/03\/review-of-mathematica-9-and-r-link\/\">have reviewed the R-Link package in Mathematica 9<\/a> that allows you to integrate R and Mathematica code.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Finite elements<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dealii.org\/7.3.0\/index.html\">Version 7.3<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dealii.org\/\">deal.II<\/a> is now available.\u00a0 deal.II is a C++ program library targeted at the computational solution of partial differential equations using adaptive finite elements.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the latest edition of A Month of Math Software where I look back over the last month and report on all that is new and shiny in the world of mathematical software.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve recently restarted work after the Easter break and so it seems fitting that I offer you all Easter Eggs courtesy [&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":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4867","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-1gv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4867","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=4867"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4900,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4867\/revisions\/4900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}