Release Notes for Release 13 (Release 13 Release Notes)

Release 13 Release Notes

MATLAB Products

MATLAB 6.5

JIT Accelerated MATLAB. One of the most significant features in MATLAB 6.5 is a new performance acceleration capability that speeds up the execution of functions and scripts in many M-file applications. The changes in how MATLAB processes functions and scripts provide a substantial performance increase over earlier MATLAB versions for many MATLAB applications.

Speeding up the execution of programs written in MATLAB is an ongoing endeavor that will be delivered over a number of product releases. The Performance Acceleration section of the MATLAB documentation explains how to best make use of the JIT Accelerator and how to use the MATLAB Profiler to optimize your performance. That section includes several sample programs to illustrate how you can make your M-file programs run faster.

Other new MATLAB features, documented in more detail in the MATLAB 6.5 Release Notes, are summarized in the following categories:

Development Environment. This release introduces the Profiler, a new graphical user interface for assessing the performance of your M-files so you can make performance improvements. In addition to this new desktop tool, there are many enhancements to the existing tools, and some new and updated related functions. These include

Use of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) Version 1.3.1 on Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms
Start button on the desktop for quick access to all tools
Find dialog in the Command Window and Command History; incremental search feature in the Command Window and Editor
Page setup options for printing from the Command Window, Command History, and Editor
Autosave options and other new preferences and features for the Command History and Editor
Display of line number, column number, and current function in the Editor
Enhancements to the Array Editor, including spreadsheet-like behavior, the ability to exchange data with Microsoft Excel, and support for larger arrays
New and updated functions for file system operations, such as movefile; new functions for exchanging files with the Internet, including ZIP and e-mail functions
Access to Demos from the Help browser and support for Boolean operators in the Help browser Search feature
Access from the Web menu to the MathWorks Web site including Check for Updates to view the latest version of MathWorks products, and MATLAB Central to download user-contributed M-files and participate in the comp.soft-sys.matlab user newsgroup
Expanded Source Control Interface capabilities on PC platforms
Notebook support for Word 2000 and 2002 (Office XP); support for Word 95 is discontinued.

Mathematics. Mathematics new features include

Solution of delay differential equations
Solution of singular boundary value ODE problems
Integration over a volume
Improved speed in core linear algebra functions for Pentium 4 (both Windows and Linux)
Improved speed for

LU factorization and LU-based solve of sparse matrices
Matrix*vector, vector*matrix, and rowvector*columnvector operations
Matrix transpose
Full triangular solve

Programming and Data Types. In addition to the performance enhancements described above in JIT Accelerated MATLAB, MATLAB 6.5 also offers support for regular expressions, changes to logical and sparse in the MATLAB data types hierarchy, more control in warning and error handling, the ability to schedule execution of MATLAB commands, and new features in audio support.

Major features of this release are

Significant performance improvements in M-file execution
logical class attribute changed to a MATLAB class
sparse class changed to a MATLAB class attribute
Support for regular expressions
Formatted strings in warning and error messages
Individual control of warnings
Dynamic field names for structures
New logical AND and OR operators for short-circuiting
More control in comparing structures, and arrays with NaNs
64-bit integer support
Improvements to large data-set handling

64-bit file handling
Less memory used to hold Boolean values

MATLAB Timer object for scheduling MATLAB command execution
Major enhancements to MATLAB Audio:

New function for obtaining audio device information
Enhancements to audiorecorder and audioplayer
24-bit recording and playback on 32-bit Windows machines
24- and 32-bit .wav file support
Workspace browser support

Programming Tips Documentation. The "MATLAB Programming Tips", a new feature documented in more detail in the MATLAB 6.5 Release Notes, is a categorized collection of tips on a wide range of topics. The tips include pointers into the MATLAB documentation for more complete coverage.

External Interfaces. MATLAB 6.5 offers many new features in MATLAB COM client support, including

Several new MATLAB functions
More robust memory management
Added flexibility in event handling
Enumerated values for properties
Capability to add your own custom properties
Graphical property and methods interfaces

Graphics. MATLAB 6.5 adds the following graphics features and enhancements:

Colormap editor enables interactive colormap editing.
New text properties provide control over the text background.
Redesigned property editor accesses graphics properties with interactive editor.

Creating Graphical User Interfaces. MATLAB 6.5 adds the following features and enhancements to GUIDE:

New structure for the generated M-files makes it easier to understand and program.
GUI templates provide simple examples that you can modify for your own purposes. It is often easier to build a GUI from an existing template rather than starting with a blank GUI.
Tab Order Editor enables you to change the order in which GUI components are selected by tabbing.
Export option in the File menu enables you to export a GUI to a single stand-alone M-file.
MATLAB Editor icon on the toolbar provides easier access to the editor.

MATLAB Compiler 3.0

New MATLAB Compiler features, documented in more detail in the MATLAB Compiler 3.0 Release Notes, include

The MATLAB C/C++ Math and Graphics Libraries being included with the Compiler
A new optimization that improves performance whenever the run-time types of variables match what is expected
The ability to create COM components from MATLAB M-files

MATLAB Report Generator 1.3

New MATLAB Report Generator features, documented in more detail in the MATLAB and Simulink Report Generator 1.3 Release Notes, include support for specifying table column widths with the MATLAB Cell Table component.

MATLAB Licensing

Two new features relate to MATLAB licensing:

MATLAB "heartbeat" time-out
New license command features, including listing licenses in use

Heartbeats. The license manager now releases all of the licenses associated with a particular MATLAB session if it does not receive "heartbeat" messages from the MATLAB client. By default, the license manager waits 2 hours before releasing licenses.

This time-out will be reached if the client machine crashes and cannot release the license, or if the machine is removed from the network (unplugged). If MATLAB reestablishes its connection to the license server after its licenses are released, they will be checked out again. When you suspend MATLAB using Ctrl+Z, the heartbeat thread is still active and continues to maintain the connection to the license server.

Note Multithreaded heartbeats are not supported on ALPHA, HP700, or IBM RS6000.

New license Command Features. The MATLAB license command now supports two new capabilities:

Obtaining a list of licenses currently in use
Identifying if a particular product is licensed

To use the MATLAB license command to obtain a list of all licenses currently in use, use this syntax

```
result = license('inuse'); 
```

You can also use the license command to check if you have a license for a particular product.

result = license('test', product_name);

You must use the product name abbreviation as it appears in the INCREMENT line in your License File (license.dat). For example, the product name for the the System Identification Toolbox is Identification_Toolbox. Note that product names are case sensitive.

Highlights of Products with New Features and Enhancements Toolboxes