{"id":4942,"date":"2013-06-02T15:07:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T14:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4942"},"modified":"2013-06-03T14:04:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T13:04:27","slug":"a-month-of-math-software-may-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4942","title":{"rendered":"A Month of Math Software &#8211; May 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?cat=47\">Month of Math Software<\/a> where I look back over May 2013 and pick out items of interest in the world of mathematical software.\u00a0 As always, thanks to everyone who contributed news items this month&#8211; I couldn&#8217;t do these posts without you.\u00a0 Feel free to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?page_id=2055\">contact me<\/a> if you have any news you&#8217;d like to share in future editions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Connecting MATLAB with Mathematica<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/matlink.org\/\">MATLink<\/a> is a free project that connects Mathematica with MATLAB.\u00a0 If you are lucky enough to have both systems, you can now use them seamlessly together.\u00a0 Version 1.0 was released in May.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Octave news<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/software\/octave\/\">GNU Octave<\/a> is an open source system for numerical computing that is broadly compatible with MATLAB.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Michael Goffioul has compiled and released <a href=\"http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/octave\/files\/Octave%20Windows%20binaries\/Octave%203.6.4%20for%20Windows%20Microsoft%20Visual%20Studio\/\">GNU Octave 3.6.4 for Windows<\/a> using Microsoft Visual Studio.\u00a0 Michael&#8217;s builds are the ones I prefer to use on Windows systems.\u00a0 The installer includes 82 packages from Octave Forge (Octave Forge packages are the Octave analogue of MATLAB Toolboxes).\u00a0 It doesn&#8217;t appear to include the experimental Graphical User Interface that&#8217;s being worked on by the Octave team.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www2.mate.polimi.it\/ocs\/?cf=42\">OctConf 2013<\/a> is a conference that brings together users and developers of Octave.\u00a0 This year it is held in Milan and user registration is now open.\u00a0 I sincerely wish I could attend but my personal life has gotten in the way!<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/open-source\/soc\/\">Google&#8217;s Summer of Code (GSoC)<\/a> awards stipends to students to work on various open source projects.\u00a0 This year, Octave will have 9 students working under the auspices of this program.\u00a0 Here are the detaills (The original source for this is at <a href=\"http:\/\/octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com\/Welcome-GSoC-students-td4653374.html\">http:\/\/octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com\/Welcome-GSoC-students-td4653374.html<\/a>)\n<ul>\n<li>Ahsan Said will be working on the Agora website (<a href=\"http:\/\/agora.octave.org\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/agora.octave.org<\/a>).\u00a0 His mentor is Jordi Guti\u00e9rrez Hermoso<\/li>\n<li>Vytautas Jan\u010dauskas will fix audio processing for Octave.\u00a0 He will be mentored by Mike Miller.<\/li>\n<li>Gedeone will implement a general purpose finite element method library. His mentor is Carlo de Falco.<\/li>\n<li>Andrej Lojdl\u00a0 wants to give Octave a native TeX rendering engine for plots. Patric Noffke is his mentor.<\/li>\n<li>Carn\u00eb Draug needs to polish the Octave-Forge image processing package for his PhD thesis and make it handle N-dimensional images.\u00a0 Jordi Guti\u00e9rrez Hermoso is mentoring.<\/li>\n<li>Matheus Vieira Portela will produce a GUI for manipulating closed-loop systems and incorporate it into the control package. Doug Stewart is his mentor.<\/li>\n<li>Riupeng Li will incorporate incomplete sparse LU and Cholesky factorisations. Mentors will be\u00a0 Youssef Saad, originator of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www-users.cs.umn.edu\/~saad\/software\/ITSOL\/index.html\">ITSOL library<\/a>\u00a0 and Carlo de Falco.<\/li>\n<li>Kai Torben Ohlhus will also coordinate with Riupeng and Carlo and work on other parts of the sparse LU and Cholesky factorisations. Nir Krakauer will be the Mentor.<\/li>\n<li>LYH will continue <a href=\"http:\/\/jit-octave.blogspot.co.uk\/\">Max Brister&#8217;s previous GSoC work<\/a> for giving Octave a <a href=\"http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/95635\/what-does-a-just-in-time-jit-compiler-do\">JIT compiler<\/a>, and John Eaton will mentor him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Numerical Algorithms Group<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nag.co.uk\/\">Numerical Algorithms Group<\/a> (NAG) have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nag.co.uk\/numeric\/FL\/newatmark24\">released Mark 24<\/a> of their superb, commercial Fortran numerical library.\u00a0 Mark 1 of this library was released way back in 1971 and only included 98 routines whereas Mark 24 has over 1,700!\u00a0 See what&#8217;s new in Mark 24 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nag.co.uk\/numeric\/FL\/newatmark24\">http:\/\/www.nag.co.uk\/numeric\/FL\/newatmark24<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Maple&#8217;s 25th Birthday<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/products\/maple\/\">Maple<\/a> turned 25 back in April but I somehow missed this piece of news when I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=4907\">April&#8217;s Month of Math Software<\/a>.\u00a0 To celebrate, Maplesoft have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/25anniversary\/\">published a timelime<\/a> showing keydates in the company&#8217;s history.\u00a0 It&#8217;s also worth checking out this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maplesoft.com\/25anniversary\/\">Happy Birthday<\/a> post over at MaplePrimes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Linear Algebra<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jack Dongarra and Mark Gates have updated their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netlib.org\/utk\/people\/JackDongarra\/la-sw.html\">survey of freely available software for the solution of linear algebra problems<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Free Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A new version of SMath Studio, a freeware program inspired by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ptc.com\/product\/mathcad\/\">Mathcad<\/a>, is now available.\u00a0 Get version 0.96.4868 and see what&#8217;s new at <a href=\"http:\/\/en.smath.info\/forum\/yaf_postst1778_SMath-Studio-0-96-4868--30-May-2013.aspx\">http:\/\/en.smath.info\/forum\/yaf_postst1778_SMath-Studio-0-96-4868&#8211;30-May-2013.aspx<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Pari is a free computer algebra system designed for fast computations in number theory.\u00a0 Version 2.5.4 was released in May and all of the new stuff is documentated at <a href=\"http:\/\/pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr\/pub\/pari\/unix\/pari-2.5.4.changelog\">http:\/\/pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr\/pub\/pari\/unix\/pari-2.5.4.changelog<\/a><\/li>\n<li>A new version of Math-o-mir, a free software tool designed to write and edit mathematical equations as easily as possible, has been released.\u00a0 See what&#8217;s new in version 1.8 at <a href=\"http:\/\/mathomir.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/20\/the-math-o-mir-v1-8-released\/\">http:\/\/mathomir.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/20\/the-math-o-mir-v1-8-released\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Optimization<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>CUTEst, the latest evolution of the constrained and unconstrained testing environment for numerical optimization by Nick Gould, Dominique Orban and Philippe Toint is now available at <a href=\"http:\/\/ccpforge.cse.rl.ac.uk\/gf\/project\/cutest\/wiki\/\">http:\/\/ccpforge.cse.rl.ac.uk\/gf\/project\/cutest\/wiki\/\u00a0 <\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gerad.ca\/nomad\/Project\/Home.html\">NOMAD<\/a> is a blackbox optimisation software that&#8217;s just been updated to version 3.6<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Finite Elements and PDEs<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wolfrgang Bangerth of Texas A&amp;M University has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.tamu.edu\/~bangerth\/videos.html\">recorded a set of lectures<\/a> on various aspects of finite elements and scientific computing.\u00a0 It has a focus on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dealii.org\/\">deal.II library<\/a> but also discusses more general scientific computing topics such as which preconditioners to use, adaptive mesh refinement, time dependent problems, parallel computing, using tools such as Visit, Paraview and Eclipse, debugging, etc.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcs.anl.gov\/petsc\/\">PETSc version 3.4<\/a> was released in May.\u00a0 PETSc is a suite of data structures and routines for the scalable (parallel) solution of scientific applications modeled by partial differential equations. \u00a0Notable new features include a system for managing unstructured grids with PDE solvers in DMPlex.\u00a0 Capability and performance improvements to the algebraic multigrid preconditioners PCGAMG, many new nonlinear solvers in SNES, many improvements to the ODE solvers in TS including the new TSEIMEX, and support for parallel dense linear algebra using MatElemental.\u00a0 The library also has better encapsulation and better control of symbols.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>GPU Accelerated Mathematics<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/icl.cs.utk.edu\/magma\/news\/news.html?id=316\">MAGMA MIC 1.0 for Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessors<\/a> has been released.\u00a0 This well known, free GPU accelerated linear algebra library also has versions for NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.txcorp.com\/home\/gpulib\">GPULib<\/a> from Tech-X provides GPU acceleration for users of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.exelisvis.com\/ProductsServices\/IDL.aspx\">IDL<\/a>.\u00a0 Version 1.6 of GPULib was released in May which adds over <a href=\"http:\/\/gpulib.blogspot.co.uk\/2013\/05\/linear-algebra-in-gpulib-16.html\">100 linear algebra routines<\/a> via a Magma wrapper and the <a href=\"http:\/\/gpulib.blogspot.co.uk\/2013\/04\/custom-kernels-in-gpulib-16.html\">ability to load and execute custom CUDA kernels at runtime<\/a> among the <a href=\"http:\/\/gpulib.blogspot.co.uk\/2013\/05\/gpulib-16-released.html\">release enhancements<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Release 17 of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.culatools.com\/downloads\/dense\/\">CULA Dense<\/a>, a GPU accelerated dense linear algebra package from EM Photonics, has been relased. \u00a0\u00a0 The release notes are available at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.culatools.com\/files\/docs\/R17\/release_notes_R17.txt\">http:\/\/www.culatools.com\/files\/docs\/R17\/release_notes_R17.txt<\/a><\/li>\n<li>EM Photonics have also released a new version of CULA Sparse.\u00a0 See what&#8217;s new in version S5 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.culatools.com\/files\/docs\/S5\/release_notes_sparse_S5.txt\">http:\/\/www.culatools.com\/files\/docs\/S5\/release_notes_sparse_S5.txt<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Statistics<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A new version of RStudio, the free Integrated Development Environment, for R has been released.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rstudio.com\/ide\/docs\/release_notes_v0.97\">Version 0.97.551<\/a> has got lots of new goodies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0From the blogs<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cleve Moler has been <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/cleve\/\">animating the golden spiral using MATLAB<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wolfram.com\/2013\/05\/17\/making-formulas-for-everything-from-pi-to-the-pink-panther-to-sir-isaac-newton\/\">Making formluas for Pi and the Pink Panther<\/a> and pretty much everthing else with Mathematica.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wolfram.com\/2013\/05\/22\/why-would-a-mathematica-user-care-about-r\/\">Why Would a Mathematica user care about R<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/idldatapoint.com\/2013\/05\/30\/beware-the-behavior-of-smooth\/\">Beware the behaviour of SMOOTH<\/a> &#8211; Floating point shenanigans using IDL<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/julialang.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/callback\/\">Passing Julia Callback Functions to C<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Building GUIs with Julia <a href=\"http:\/\/julialang.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/graphical-user-interfaces-part1\/\">part 1<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/julialang.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/graphical-user-interfaces-part2\/\">part 2<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the latest Month of Math Software where I look back over May 2013 and pick out items of interest in the world of mathematical software.\u00a0 As always, thanks to everyone who contributed news items this month&#8211; I couldn&#8217;t do these posts without you.\u00a0 Feel free to contact me if you have any news [&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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4942","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-1hI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942","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=4942"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4985,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942\/revisions\/4985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}