Monday, August 29, 2011

Matlab "clones"

Our department has a Matlab license with quite a comprehensive lineup of specialty toolboxes and Simulink blocksets. Students and staff are allowed to use this license remotely from anywhere within Canada, the USA and Mexico (why these? something to do with NAFTA, apparently.) So please don't use our ECE network license to run Matlab on a computer located outside this region (remote login from anywhere to run the code on one of our computers here is permitted.)

But what about after graduation, or for friends and family who may need powerful simulation, matrix arithmetic and m-code functions? Well, aside from the Student Edition of Matlab, there are a number of free products available that provide some similar functionality, including an effort at m-code compatibility. This page offers a write-up on three such packages: FreeMat, Octave and Scilab.

I've heard good things about Scilab in the past, though I haven't tested out any of these three. Prof. Mann has made extensive use of Octave, I understand.

1 comment: