IMSL(ID:6765/ims001)Statistical system from International Mathematical and Statistical Libraries, Inc,Houston, Texas 77036 References: This is a collection of mathematical and statistical subroutines written in FORTRAN IV, and tested on the IBM 370/360 series under OS and DOS. The first edition of this package was released by IMSL in February 1971. in [ACM] ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 4(2) June 1972 view details IMSL. Nearly 20 years old, IMSL's mathematical libraries have been around long enough to garner a good number of adherents in industry as well as academia. IMSL's libraries all sprang from a common ancestor, "Library 1," a collection of mathematical and statistical subroutines introduced on punch cards for the IBM 360/370 in 1971. The libraries now in existence support over 60 computing platforms, including the IBM PC, PS/2, and Macintosh personal computers; Apollo, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Silicon Graphics, and Sun workstations; minicomputers; and mainframes and vector-based computers such as those offered by Alliant, Control Data, Convex, Cray, IBM, and NEC. A variety of licenses are available. For example, a "paid-up license," the most expensive kind offered, costs $2000 for a single IBM PC - class computer and $4500 for a single workstation. Various discounts, including quantity and educational ones, are available at all licensing levels. All of the various versions of the libraries must be used in the same way, as well: they must be LINKed to and CALLed by a Fortran program and run in conjunction with the user's compiler. "You must put everything into an executable module with the necessary object code," explained Gary Lelvis, the director of product assembly. "Once you've built the executable module you can rerun it with fresh data." In other words, you have to have some programming skills to use IMSL's mathematical capabilities. For those Fortran-savvy engineers willing to write some code to solve their mathematical problems, the package can be molded to meet many needs. "Anyone who does a great deal of numerical computation in Fortran would be unwise to ignore the IMSL libraries," agreed Kahan, who didn't wish to comment directly on the software because he is on IMSL's corporate advisory board. IMSL estimates that the software has been installed at 12,000 sites and has over 500,000 users. For example, at the Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) factory near Munich, West Germany, the IMSL libraries are run on a network of DEC Vaxstations, Microvax IIs, and a Vax 8850. The software is used to simulate the dynamical behavior of cars being designed. Specifically, the routines are used for "interpolation or approximation of measurement data, such as engine characteristic graphs, time-step solutions of linear or nonlinear multidimensional equation systems and executions of eigenvalue and eigenvector calculation," said Karl Plitt, a mathematician and software engineer for the company. in [ACM] ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 4(2) June 1972 view details |