Editor’s Pick: MathWorks Announces Release 2010b of MATLAB and Simulink Products

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

A few days ago the MathWorks released the 2010b version of its MATLAB and Simulink product families. So, what’s new with them and why might you want to learn more?

The second part of that question really goes without saying. In certain quarters, MATLAB, Simulink, or both are ubiquitous tools upon which many a company’s fortunes rests. Now let’s look at the first half.

Updates to MATLAB now offer support for advanced programming such as custom enumerated data types and 64-bit integer arithmetic. The Parallel Computing Toolbox now supports CUDA-enabled NVIDIA hardware, and the Image Acquisition Toolbox offers plug-and-play camera input using the GigE Vision hardware standard. New commands and graphical tools enable you to model and tune PID controllers automatically from the Control System Toolbox.

Simulink offers a new signal type and subsystem enhancements that should make things all the more efficient with large models. And the company says that new capabilities for capturing design variants and configurations as well as creating reusable state charts should help teams manage design alternatives and reuse large, complex system models.

One capability to watch, in my opinion, is the new FPGA Workflow Advisor in the Simulink HDL Coder. This Advisor is designed for critical path analysis and automated implementation on Xilinx and Altera FPGAs. FPGAs are the way things are going, so this is sure to become a vital tool in no time.

The R2010b release also introduces SimRF. Now, as I understand it, SimRF is circuit-envelope and harmonic balance simulation technology built on the Simscape platform that you use for modeling RF system architectures.

You can learn more about the new features and upgrades to be had in the R2010b release of the MATLAB and Simulink product families from today’s Pick of the Week new product write-up. There are links to videos and webinars, and the MathWorks populates their landing pages with all sorts of extra materials for you to browse through.

It’s been a few years since I wandered download to the MathWorks for a demo or briefing. Still, as I said earlier, MATLAB and Simulink are tools that are at the heart of the work at many engineering enterprises, so a new release was bound to catch my eye.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week new product write-up.