MathWorks announces Release 2016a of MATLAB and Simulink families

Natick, MA. MathWorks has introduced Release 2016a (R2016a) of its MATLAB and Simulink product families. This release includes the MATLAB Live Editor, which offers the ability to write, run, and modify code in a single interactive environment to accelerate exploratory analysis, and App Designer, an environment that simplifies the process of building MATLAB apps. R2016a also includes a number of new features in Simulink to help speed model development and simulation, as well as updates and bug fixes to all other products.

The Live Editor offers a new way to create, edit, and run MATLAB code. Results and graphics are displayed together with the code that produced them in a single interactive environment, speeding exploratory programming and analysis. Now, scientists and engineers can add formatted text, mathematical equations, images, and hyperlinks to create an interactive narrative that can be shared with others.

App Designer provides an enhanced design environment and UI component set for building MATLAB apps. It integrates the two primary tasks of creating an interactive application—laying out the visual components, and programming the behavior of the app. The generated code is object-oriented, which makes it easier to share data between the different elements of the app, and the compact structure makes it easier to understand and maintain.

Additional MATLAB product family updates include new multiple y-axis plots, polar plots, and equation visualizationas well as pause, debug, and resume MATLAB code execution. Neural Network Toolbox supports deep learning with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for image classification tasks using GPU acceleration in Parallel Computing Toolbox. Symbolic Math Toolbox supports integration with the MATLAB Live Editor for editing symbolic code, visualizing results, and converting MuPAD notebooks to live scripts. Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox includes the Classification Learner app that trains multiple models automatically, visualizes results by class labels, and performs logistic regression classification. Control System Toolbox offers new and redesigned apps for designing SISO controllers, automatically tuning MIMO systems, and creating reduced-order models. Image Acquisition Toolbox supports Kinect for Windows v2 and USB 3 Vision. Computer Vision System Toolbox includes an optical character recognition (OCR) Trainer app; it supports pedestrian detection and structure from motion and bundle adjustment for 3-D vision. Trading Toolbox supports transaction cost analysis for trading, sensitivity, and post-trade execution.

Simulink product family updates include a start page for starting or resuming work faster by accessing templates, recent models, and featured examples; an automatic solver option to set up and simulate your model more quickly; simulation of system models targeting heterogeneous devices such as Xilinx and Altera SoC architectures; units to specify, visualize, and check units at interfaces of Simulink, Stateflow, and Simscape components; and variant source and sink blocks for defining and propagating variant conditions to connected functionality with compiler directives in generated code. Aerospace Blockset includes standard cockpit instruments for displaying flight conditions.

SimEvents offers a new discrete-event simulation and modeling engine with event-actions, MATLAB discrete-event system object authoring, and Simulink and Stateflow automatic domain transitions. Simscape offers new equation reduction and simulation technology for faster simulation and run-time parameter tuning in generated code. Simscape Fluids includes a thermal liquid library for modeling systems with liquids whose properties vary with temperature. Simulink Design Optimization provides a sensitivity analysis tool using design of experiments, Monte Carlo simulations, and correlation analysis. Simulink Report Generator provides a three-way model merge for graphically resolving conflicts between revisions within a Simulink project.

Signal Processing and Communications updates include Antenna Toolbox (dielectric modeling for analyzing substrate effects in antennas and finite antenna arrays), RF Toolbox (RF budget analyzer for computing gain, noise figure, and IP3 for cascaded RF components), SimRF (automatic RF testbench generation), and Audio System Toolbox (a new product for designing and testing audio processing systems).

Code generation updates include Embedded Coder (compiler directive generation for implementing signal dimensions as #define), HDL Coder (HDL-optimized FFT and IFFT that support frame input for gigasample-per-second design), and HDL Verifier (PCIe FPGA-in-the-Loop for simulating algorithms on Xilinx KC705/VC707 and Altera Cyclone V GT/Stratix V DSP development boards via the PCI Express interface).

Verification and validation updates include Polyspace Code Prover (support for long-double floating point and improved support for Infinity and NaN), Simulink Design Verifier (automatic test generation for C code S-functions), IEC Certification Kit (IEC 62304 medical standard support for Simulink verification and validation), and Simulink Test (to author and execute real-time tests with Simulink Real-Time).

R2016a is available immediately worldwide.

http://www.mathworks.com/products/new_products/latest_features.html