Mathematica 8.0.4 now available

[Wolfram Research]

We are pleased to announce the release of Mathematica 8.0.4. This
new version streamlines deployment to the Computable Document
Format (CDF) with a new interactive wizard and new functions for
programmatic deployment. Key usability, stability, and security
enhancements include:

* New menu options and an interactive wizard for deploying to CDF
* New functions CDFInformation and CDFDeploy for programmatically
deploying CDF files
* New download progress indicator for the CDF browser plugin
* Improved stability, speed, and security of the CDF browser
plugin
* Tested under Mac OS X Lion
* Improved memory use of the Share function when storing large
sets of data
* Updated MKL library to improve performance
* New syntax coloring to warn about use of Module variable in
Dynamic
* Performance improvements to citation functions
* Improved behavior of optimized variables in compiled
conditional statements
* Improved front end behavior when saving untitled notebooks
under new versions of Linux

Users who have Mathematica 8.0.0 or 8.0.1 with active Premier
Service will receive email from us in the next few days with
instructions on how to download their free updates.

Sincerely,


Wolfram Research
Customer Support
http://www.wolfram.com/support

[Szabolcs]

Hello,

Can anyone please test if the following bugs are fixed in 8.0.4?

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/RRsfrHCjwRM/discussion
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/3MS4Ar-zwqQ/discussion

[Murray Eisenberg]

#1: No, bug still not fixed!

#2: Yes, bug seems to be fixed. Kernel does _not_ crash; result is an
empty graph, as expected.

--
Murray Eisenberg mur...@math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305

[A Retey]

Hi,

> Can anyone please test if the following bugs are fixed in 8.0.4?
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/RRsfrHCjwRM/discussion

looks like it still does the same as in 8.0.1

> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/3MS4Ar-zwqQ/discussion

this does not crash the kernel anymore on my machine
("8.0 for Microsoft Windows (64-bit) (October 7, 2011)").
It returns an empty graph, would you consider this to be the correct
behavior?

hth,

albert

[Bill Rowe]

On 10/28/11 at 5:37 AM, szho...@gmail.com (Szabolcs) wrote:

>Can anyone please test if the following bugs are fixed in 8.0.4?

><https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/RRsfrHCjwRM/discussion>

><https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/3MS4Ar-zwqQ/discussion>

Using Mac OS X 10.7.2 I can reproduce the result shown in the
first link but do not see a kernel crash as you report. That is:

In[1]:= jj = Subgraph[Graph[{1, 2, 3, 4}, {3 -> 4}], {1, 2, 3}];
IsomorphicGraphQ[jj, Graph[{1, 2, 3}, {}]]

Out[2]= False

In[3]:= VertexDelete[
AdjacencyGraph@AdjacencyMatrix@Graph[{1 -> 2}], {1, 2}];

In[4]:= $Version

Out[4]= 8.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (October 5, 2011)

[DmitryG]

On Oct 26, 5:41 pm, Wolfram Research <i...@wolfram.com> wrote:
> We are pleased to announce the release of Mathematica8.0.4. This

While I am waiting for activation of 8.0.4, can anybody check that the
CUDAImageConvolve bug(?) mentioned in my post

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/browse_thread/thread/7b85386aa8a0e1ab/82001d52e68ed2ac?lnk=gst&q=dmitryG#82001d52e68ed2ac

had ben corrected?

Thank you,

Dmitry

[DmitryG]

On Oct 26, 2:41 pm, Wolfram Research <i...@wolfram.com> wrote:
> We are pleased to announce the release of Mathematica8.0.4. This

I have tested Mathematica 8.0.4 for CUDA because now I have a new
laptop with a new nVidia Geforce 555M card. As before, CUDADot is
slower than regular Dot on reals, so I do not know how I could benefit
from GPU calculations

Another disappointment is that 8.0.4 does not recognize any C compiles
except of the Intel C compiler and a Generic C compiler that are
listed by CCompilers[Full]. There are no other compilers in the list.
I have upgraded to Mathematica 8.0.4 under Windows7 with the new
laptop and now I cannot use Miscosoft Visual C++ compiler. Also I have
upgraded on my Mac Pro and now I cannot use the GCC compiler that I
was using with Mathematica 8.0.1.

I do not know whether a better CDF support and maybe a better MKL
library compensate for the loss of C compilers and thus whether an
upgrade to 8.0.4 makes sense.

As for GPU computations, it seems we have to wait for Mathematica 9.

Dmitry

[Yves Klett]

Whether or not a certain CUDA implementation is faster than regular code
is totally dependent on the example. For small toy examples the CUDA
overhead is huge and the use inefficient.

Consider CUDASort on my not so slow machine:

Needs["CUDALink`"]
$HistoryLength = 0;
l = Reverse@Range[10^4];
AbsoluteTiming[Do[Sort[l], {100}]]
AbsoluteTiming[Do[CUDASort[l], {100}]]

{0.0230046, Null}
{0.5071014, Null}

l = Reverse@Range[10^7];
AbsoluteTiming[a = Sort[l];]
AbsoluteTiming[b = CUDASort[l];]
a == b

{0.4420884, Null}
{0.2640528, Null}
True

For huge lists CUDASort can be quite a bit faster out of the box. Makes
a lot of noise, though, but keeps you warm in wintertime.

Regards,
Yves

[Bert RAM Aerts]

On 3 nov, 09:49, DmitryG <einsch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have tested Mathematica 8.0.4 for CUDA because now I have a new
> laptop with a new nVidia Geforce 555M card. As before, CUDADot is
> slower than regular Dot on reals, so I do not know how I could benefit
> from GPU calculations
>

On my 4 years old notebook with Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVIDIA GeForce
8600M GT I get the following difference:
Timing[CUDADot[Table[i, {i, 500}, {j, 500}], Table[i, {i, 500}, {j,
500}]]] gives 0.031995
Timing[Dot[Table[i, {i, 500}, {j, 500}], Table[i, {i, 500}, {j,
500}]]] gives 0.218967
So CUDADot is faster than Dot. My graphics card only supports integers
and single precision floats.

I use Mageia 1 linux with latest nVIDIA driver 285.05.09 and CUDA
toolkit 4.0.17, Mathematica 8.0.4 with CUDAlink 8.0.4.1

Concerning compilers: I use GCC and needed to adapt a header file to
get my version supported, see
https://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/browse_thread/thread/b2796ec532fa3b12/b916d81a4ec2e636?hl=nl&lnk=gst&q=cuda+bert+aerts#b916d81a4ec2e636

[A Retey]

Hi,

> I have tested Mathematica 8.0.4 for CUDA because now I have a new
> laptop with a new nVidia Geforce 555M card. As before, CUDADot is
> slower than regular Dot on reals, so I do not know how I could benefit
> from GPU calculations
>
> Another disappointment is that 8.0.4 does not recognize any C compiles
> except of the Intel C compiler and a Generic C compiler that are
> listed by CCompilers[Full]. There are no other compilers in the list.
> I have upgraded to Mathematica 8.0.4 under Windows7 with the new
> laptop and now I cannot use Miscosoft Visual C++ compiler. Also I have
> upgraded on my Mac Pro and now I cannot use the GCC compiler that I
> was using with Mathematica 8.0.1.

I don't think that this is true, I have installed the MS compiler on
Windows 7 64 bit and it works alright with 8.0.4. There is also nothing
mentioned in the documentation that other compilers would not be
supported anymore. Maybe you want to check that you have recent versions
or whether something is wrong with your configuration, you also might
want to ask WRI for some support...

> I do not know whether a better CDF support and maybe a better MKL
> library compensate for the loss of C compilers and thus whether an
> upgrade to 8.0.4 makes sense.

I can't give you a list, but my guess is that there have been various
bugs fixed in version 8.0.4, one of them has been discussed in this very
thread. So I think additional features are not the main reason why
someone might want to upgrade.

> As for GPU computations, it seems we have to wait for Mathematica 9.

that depends a lot on what level you expect support for this and what
you want to do with it. At the current stage, it will take some effort
to get everything running. _And_ it is also up to you to adopt the code
to the hardware to be used on a relatively low level, otherwise you
can't expect the best possible speedup. But to my understanding that is
somewhat intrinsic to GPU computing (or even parallel computing) in
general. It remains to be seen whether WRI can achieve easy access at a
higher level without loosing efficiency in future versions, but I think
it's just not that simple, so I wouldn't expect wonders from version 9...

regards,

albert