NAG Ping - Issue 11 (March 2003)

If your code contains OpenMP directives to create parallel regions, please remember that this will switch off any parallelism in NAG routines called within the parallel region since multi-level SMP parallelism is not (yet) supported by any vendor.

For more information about the NAG SMP Library please click here: http://www.nag.com/numeric/fl/FSdescription.asp or email infodesk@nag.com with any specific inquiries.

As the users of many enterprise and desktop applications have begun to demand sophisticated analytical capabilities, Independent Software Vendor firms (ISVs) have turned increasing to NAG for robust, fast, accurate, and thoroughly documented math, statistical, and data mining capabilities. These include such well-known firms as PeopleSoft, IBM Data Solutions, and Manugistics as well as many others. They trust NAG software to give their customers the accuracy, speed and performance NAG customers have enjoyed for over 30 years. Our Software Partners also rely on NAG in two other areas - available components that shave months and hundreds of labor hours from product development schedules and expert guidance and technical support on the use of these components.

In this issue, we would like to welcome two new NAG Software Partners - Gylling Data Management and SoftIntegration, Inc.

Gylling Data Management (GDM) recently introduced Agricultural Research Manager 7 software for establishing, managing, and summarizing of herbicide, insecticide, fungicide, seed/variety, fertilizer, general non-chemical, nematicide, and plant growth regulator research trials. GDM enhanced its product with the incorporation of sophisticated experimental design components from NAG. Learn more at http://www.gdmdata.com.

SoftIntegration makes Ch, an embeddable C/C++ interpreter for cross-platform scripting, shell programming, 2D/3D plotting and numerical computing. Ch allows users to use one language, anywhere and everywhere, for any programming tasks on platforms including Windows, Linux, MacOS X, and Unix. SoftIntegration plans to incorporate multiple NAG statistical functions into an upcoming release of their software. Learn more at http://www.softintegration.com.

Every organization has a history that predicts its future. The NAG software you use today and the service you receive from us is shaped by our thirty plus year history and by the goals and practices of our founders, many of whom are with us today. NAG began as the Nottingham Algorithms Group in 1970, a collaborative project among the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford, and the Atlas Computer Laboratory. The aim was to develop a library of numerical and statistical subroutines for use on their ICL 1906A/S machines. Because of the different language emphasis in the centers and the difficulty of mixed-language programming, it was decided to develop the library in both Algol 60 and ANSI Fortran. The Mark 1 Library contained 98 user-callable routines and was released on October 1, 1971.

Universities with other types of computers became interested in the activity and various machine-range implementations were initiated beginning with Mark 2 of the Library. Thus began growth of an organization dedicated to the following goals:

• Create a balanced, general-purpose library of algorithms meeting the numerical and statistical needs of computer users;
• Thoroughly document the library, giving advice on problem identification, algorithm selection, and routine usage;
• Provide a substantial test suite, including example test programs, for certification of the library;
• Implement the Library as widely as user demand requires.

NAG committed itself to a long-term program of library contents development with a strong emphasis on documentation, testing and portability. This emphasis has been maintained throughout the decades and is reflected in the present-day range of NAG products. Algorithm contributions and implementations were coordinated from Nottingham until August 1973 when the project offices were moved to Oxford University and the name of the project was changed from "The Nottingham Algorithms Group" to "The Numerical Algorithms Group".

-- NAG and Waterloo Maple Announce Next Phase in Partnership
-- OR/MS Today, Financial Engineering News reviews NAG Data Mining Components
-- Intel Developer Tools & NAG Libraries - New products available
-- Origins of NAG - Part 2

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The NAG Ping is an occasional newsletter of technical tips, product information and discussions of technical computing topics. Its principal audience is in North America though it has readers throughout the world. It is the sister publication of the NAGNews, produced by our colleagues at NAG Ltd primarily for those in Europe and elsewhere outside North America.

The NAG Ping is named in memory of Mike Muuss, formerly of the Army Research Laboratory. Among the creative and useful works of his life was the "ping" program to test network connection. It was written by Mike in 1983 to help diagnose problems on his network. The name is tied to Mike's earlier work in sonar modeling and echolocation. To learn more, click here.

Contact us at at ping@nag.com or http://nag.com/contact_us.asp#northamerica.

Copyright 2001-2004 Numerical Algorithms Group, Inc.