What's New in Release 2008a

Release 2008a includes new features in MATLAB and Simulink, two new products, and updates and bug fixes to 82 other products. Subscribers to MathWorks™ Software Maintenance Service can download product updates.

Beginning with R2008a, the MATLAB and Simulink product families require activation. R2008a also introduces the License Center, an online tool that addresses common license administration needs.
New capabilities for the MATLAB® product family include:

* State-of-the-art object-oriented programming in MATLAB, including full support for classes and objects, inheritance, methods, properties, events, and packages
* Interior point solver and parallel computing support in Optimization Toolbox
* Linear Complementarity Program (LCP) for mean-variance portfolio optimization in Financial Toolbox
* Full support for PBS Pro® and TORQUE schedulers with Parallel Computing Toolbox
* Cross validation, feature selection, quasi-random numbers, and partial least squares in Statistics Toolbox

New capabilities for the Simulink® product family include:

* Redesigned, multiplatform Library Browser in Simulink
* AUTOSAR-compliant code generation in Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder
* Code checking of Embedded MATLAB™ language subset functions in the M-Lint code analyzer and Simulink® Design Verifier
* IEC 61508 style guideline checks for safety-critical systems in Simulink Verification and Validation
* Fixed-Point Advisor for automated conversion of floating-point models in Simulink Fixed Point
* Fixed-point support for modulator, demodulator, encoder, and decoder functions in Communications Blockset
* Embedded IDE Link MU, a new product that deploys code generated by Simulink to the Green Hills MULTI development environment