MathWorks

Last updated

The MathWorks, Inc.
Company type Private
IndustryMathematical computing software
FoundedDecember 7, 1984;39 years ago (1984-12-07) in Portola Valley, California, U.S.
Founders
Headquarters
Natick, Massachusetts
,
U.S.
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Jack Little (CEO and President)
  • Cleve Moler (Chief Mathematician)
Products MATLAB, Simulink
RevenueIncrease2.svg US$1.25 billion (2022) [1]
Number of employees
6,000 (2023) [2]
Website mathworks.com

MathWorks, Inc. is an American privately held corporation that specializes in mathematical computing software. Its major products include MATLAB and Simulink, which support data analysis and simulation.

Contents

History

Mathwork's flagship product, MATLAB, was created in the 1970s by Cleve Moler, who was chairman of the computer science department at the University of New Mexico at the time. It was a free tool for academics. Jack Little, who would eventually set up the company, came across the tool while he was a graduate student in electrical engineering at Stanford University. [3] [4]

Little and Steve Bangert rewrote the code for MATLAB in C while they were colleagues at an engineering firm. [3] [5] They founded MathWorks along with Moler in 1984, [5] with Little running it out of his house in Portola Valley, California. [6] Little would mail diskettes in baggies (food storage bags) to the first customers. [7] The company sold its first order, 10 copies of MATLAB, for $500 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in February 1985. [8] A few years later, Little and the company moved to Massachusetts. [6] [9] There, Little hired Jeanne O'Keefe, an experienced computer executive, to help formalize the business. [3] By 1997, MathWorks was profitable, claiming revenue of around $50 million, and had around 380 employees. [3]

Apple Hill Campus in Natick Main campus, MathWorks, Natick MA.jpg
Apple Hill Campus in Natick

In 1999, MathWorks relocated to the Apple Hill office complex in Natick, Massachusetts, purchasing additional buildings in the complex in 2008 and 2009, [10] ultimately occupying the entire campus. MathWorks expanded further in 2013 by buying Boston Scientific's old headquarters campus, which is near to MathWorks' headquarters in Natick. [11]

By 2018, the company had around 3,000 employees in Natick and said it had revenues of around $900 million. [12]

Products

The company's two lead products are MATLAB, which provides an environment for scientists, engineers and programmers to analyze and visualize data and develop algorithms, and Simulink, a graphical and simulation environment for model-based design of dynamic systems. [13] [14] MATLAB and Simulink are used in aerospace, automotive, software and other fields. [15] The company's other products include Polyspace, SimEvents, Stateflow, and ThingSpeak.

Corporate affairs

Intellectual property and competition

In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against MathWorks and Wind River Systems alleging that an agreement between them violated antitrust laws. The agreement in question stipulated that the two companies agreed to stop competing in the field of dynamic control system design software, with MathWorks alone selling Wind River's MATRIXx Software and that Wind River would stop all research and development and sales in that field. Both companies eventually settled with the Department of Justice and agreed to sell the MATRIXx software to a third party. MathWorks had total sales of $200 million in 2001, with dynamic control system design software accounting for half of those sales. [16]

MathWorks's Simulink software was found to have infringed 3 patents from National Instruments related to data flow diagrams in 2003, a decision which was confirmed by a court of appeal in 2004. [17]

In 2011, MathWorks sued AccelerEyes for copyright infringement in one court, and patent and trademark infringement in another. AccelerEyes accepted consent decrees in both cases before the trials began. [18]

In 2012, the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into MathWorks after competitors alleged that MathWorks refused to grant licenses to its intellectual property that would allow people to create software with interoperability with its products. [19] [20] The case was closed in 2014 without filing any charge. [21]

The logo represents the first vibrational mode of a thin L-shaped membrane, clamped at the edges, and governed by the wave equation, which was the subject of Moler's thesis. [4]

Community

The company annually sponsors a number of student engineering competitions, including EcoCAR, an advanced vehicle technology competition created by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and General Motors (GM). [22] MathWorks sponsored the mathematics exhibit at London's Science Museum. [23]

In the coding community, MathWorks hosts MATLAB Central, an online exchange where users ask and answer questions and share code. MATLAB Central currently houses around than 145,000 questions in its MATLAB Answers database. [24] The company actively supports numerous academic institutions to advance STEM education (primarily through the use of MathWorks products), including giving funding to MIT Open Courseware and MITx. [25] [26]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MATLAB</span> Numerical computing environment and programming language

MATLAB is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scilab</span> Open-source numerical computation software

Scilab is a free and open-source, cross-platform numerical computational package and a high-level, numerically oriented programming language. It can be used for signal processing, statistical analysis, image enhancement, fluid dynamics simulations, numerical optimization, and modeling, simulation of explicit and implicit dynamical systems and symbolic manipulations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simulink</span> Programming environment

Simulink is a MATLAB-based graphical programming environment for modeling, simulating and analyzing multidomain dynamical systems. Its primary interface is a graphical block diagramming tool and a customizable set of block libraries. It offers tight integration with the rest of the MATLAB environment and can either drive MATLAB or be scripted from it. Simulink is widely used in automatic control and digital signal processing for multidomain simulation and model-based design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleve Moler</span> American mathematician

Cleve Barry Moler is an American mathematician and computer programmer specializing in numerical analysis. In the mid to late 1970s, he was one of the authors of LINPACK and EISPACK, Fortran libraries for numerical computing. He created MATLAB, a numerical computing package, to give his students at the University of New Mexico easy access to these libraries without writing Fortran. In 1984, he co-founded MathWorks with Jack Little to commercialize this program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stateflow</span>

Stateflow is a control logic tool used to model reactive systems via state machines and flow charts within a Simulink model. Stateflow uses a variant of the finite-state machine notation established by David Harel, enabling the representation of hierarchy, parallelism and history within a state chart. Stateflow also provides state transition tables and truth tables.

John N. "Jack" Little is an American electrical engineer and the CEO and co-founder of MathWorks and a co-author of early versions of the company's MATLAB product.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OrCAD</span> Electronic design automation software

OrCAD Systems Corporation was a software company that made OrCAD, a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation (EDA). The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and electronic technicians to create electronic schematics, and perform mixed-signal simulation and electronic prints for manufacturing printed circuit boards (PCBs). OrCAD was taken over by Cadence Design Systems in 1999 and was integrated with Cadence Allegro in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SimEvents</span> Discrete event simulation tool developed by MathWorks

SimEvents is a discrete event simulation tool developed by MathWorks. It adds a library of graphical building blocks for modeling queuing systems to the Simulink environment. It also adds an event-based simulation engine to the time-based simulation engine in Simulink

ETAS GmbH is a German company which designs tools for the development of embedded systems for the automotive industry and other sectors of the embedded industry. ETAS is 100-percent subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH.

The Functional Mock-up Interface defines a standardized interface to be used in computer simulations to develop complex cyber-physical systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">20-sim</span>

20-sim is a commercial modeling and simulation program for multi-domain dynamic systems, which is developed by Controllab. With 20-sim, models can be entered as equations, block diagrams, bond graphs and physical components. 20-sim is used for modeling complex multi-domain systems and for the development of control systems.

In applied mathematics, test functions, known as artificial landscapes, are useful to evaluate characteristics of optimization algorithms, such as:

dSPACE GmbH, located in Paderborn, Germany, is one of the world's leading providers of tools for developing electronic control units.


Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) is a type of simulation methodology that allows for the rapid evaluation of control systems, especially for large machinery. It can test and evaluate algorithms as well as associated components such as sensors, actuators, pumps etc. The system requires some type of mock up, usually a scaled down version of the system to be tested, plus high powered computer simulation software. Rapid Control Prototyping has gained popularity thanks to its ability to accelerate product development and reduce their time-to-market. The approach also helps mitigate design risks, thanks to their early identification.

The Robotics Toolbox is MATLAB toolbox software that supports research and teaching into arm-type and mobile robotics. While the Robotics Toolbox is free software, it requires the proprietary MATLAB environment in order to execute. The Toolbox forms the basis of the exercises in several textbooks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Integrated Systems Inc.</span> Defunct American software company

Integrated Systems Inc. (ISI) was an embedded software company founded by Naren Gupta in 1980/1981. Summit Partners invested in 1987, the company listed in 1990, and it was acquired by Wind River Systems in 2000.

The following table compares notable software frameworks, libraries and computer programs for deep learning.

<i>rFpro</i> Driving simulation software

rFpro, originally rFactor Pro, is a driving simulation software used by racing teams and car manufacturers for advanced driver-assistance systems, self-driving cars and vehicle dynamics. rFactor Pro was created in 2007 as a project of a F1 racing team, using Image Space Incorporated's rFactor as a codebase. It has since been used by more F1 racing teams, top road car OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and motorsport manufacturers. It was originally developed for driver-in-the-Loop simulations, but has since been used for autonomous vehicle training as well. It is not licensed to consumers.

References

  1. ↑ "About MathWorks". mathworks.com. Retrieved April 30, 2022.
  2. ↑ "2023 Company Fact Sheet" (PDF). MathWorks. Retrieved July 2, 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Blanton, Kimberly (April 20, 1997). "At Mathworks, support + fun = success CEO Jack Little believes in power of his workers -- and their ideas". The Boston Globe. p. J5. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
  4. 1 2 Haigh, Thomas (January 2008). "Cleve Moler: Mathematical Software Pioneer and Creator of MATLAB". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 30 (1): 87–91. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2008.2. S2CID   31651607.
  5. 1 2 Nagar, Sandeep (2017). Introduction to MATLAB for Engineers and Scientists: Solutions for Numerical Computation and Modeling. New York: Apress. p. 3. ISBN   978-1484231890 . Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  6. 1 2 Higham, Nicholas (March 16, 2017). "Tracing the Early History of MATLAB Through SIAM News". SIAM News. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  7. ↑ Blanton, Kimberly (April 20, 1997). "At Mathworks, support + fun = success CEO Jack Little believes in power of his workers -- and their ideas". The Boston Globe. p. J1. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
  8. ↑ Ogewell, Verdi (April 25, 2016). "MathWorks: Product Digitization is a Boost for Smart Algorithms and Simulation". Engineering.com. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  9. ↑ Chesto, Jon (June 18, 2018). "MathWorks expansion could bring up to 2,000 new jobs to Natick in the next five years". The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  10. ↑ Breitrose, Charlie (December 30, 2009). "MathWorks buys Natick building to create campus". The Metrowest Daily News.
  11. ↑ Grillo, Thomas (April 5, 2013). "MathWorks pays $55M for Boston Scientific's Natick HQ". Boston Business Journal.
  12. ↑ Chesto, Jon (June 15, 2018). "Natick software firm to add 2,000 local jobs within five years". Boston Globe.
  13. ↑ "Matlab edges closer to electronic design automation world". EE Times. October 4, 2004. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  14. ↑ Ogewell, Verdi (April 25, 2016). "MathWorks: Product Digitization is a Boost for Smart Algorithms and Simulation". Engineering.com. Retrieved August 4, 2017.
  15. ↑ Welker, Grant (May 29, 2017). "MathWorks now in more than 180 countries". Worcester Business Journal Online.
  16. ↑ "Press release: Justice Department Reaches Settlement with The MathWorks Inc". US Department of Justice. August 15, 2002.
  17. ↑ "Federal Circuit Affirms Decision For National Instruments In Patent Suit Vs. Mathworks". Law360. September 7, 2004.
  18. ↑ "MathWorks wins copyright and patent infringement cases". Jones Day. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
  19. ↑ "Commission opens interoperability proceedings against MathWorks". King & Wood Mallesons. 2012.
  20. ↑ "Opening of Proceedings" (PDF). European Commission. February 29, 2012.
  21. ↑ "Closing of Proceedings" (PDF). European Commission. September 2, 2014. The Commission decided, as a result of the formal investigation, to close the antitrust proceedings initiated on 29 February 2012 against MathWorks in case AT.39840.
  22. ↑ Lulka, Jess (October 14, 2015). "EcoCAR3 and MathWorks Partner for Advanced Vehicle Technology". Digital Engineering. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  23. ↑ Booth, Nick. "MathWorks - the proof is in the Science Museum". Computer Weekly. No. 22 December 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  24. ↑ Waterman, Pamela J. (June 1, 2015). "Mainstreaming Math Tools for Engineers". Digital Engineering. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  25. ↑ "MathWorks supports MIT with $2M funding". Worcester Business Journal Online. March 21, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  26. ↑ "MathWorks Sponsors Boston STEM Week". Digital Engineering. October 10, 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2017.

Further reading

42°18′01″N71°21′01″W / 42.30025°N 71.35039°W / 42.30025; -71.35039

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.