Visual Numerics® Releases Version 7.0 of the IMSL® C Library with Unprecedented Performance and Depth of Algorithms

Extensive parallelization of algorithms ensure strong numerical application performance in multi-core environments

HOUSTON, TX – November 13, 2008 -- Today, Visual Numerics, Inc., a 38-year producer of advanced numerical analysis and visualization software, announced the immediate availability of version 7.0 of the IMSL C Numerical Library. This release provides improved performance in multi-core and many-core environments through the parallelization of numerous algorithms using OpenMP and greater depth of functionality via new and updated algorithms.

"This version 7.0 release of the IMSL C Library is one of our most ambitious product updates in recent years,” said Dr. Ed Stewart, IMSL Product Manager, Visual Numerics. “The performance improvements and new analytic capabilities should benefit both our extensive user community and developers looking for new analytic solutions.”

Recent articles and analyst reports document the strong revenue and unit sales growth for multi- and many-core systems. In September, the research firm IDC reported 10% growth for high-performance multi-core systems for the second quarter of 2008 alone. These high-performance systems though pose a challenge for software developers who need to transition from programming for single-core processors to multiple cores. To help alleviate this challenge, Visual Numerics has parallelized numerous algorithms in the IMSL C Library version 7.0 release using OpenMP technology. By using these parallelized algorithms, developers can write applications that take best advantage of the performance capabilities of multi-core systems.

“Developers can increase business productivity and keep costs down by taking advantage of the full performance of multi-core technology in high-performance computing applications,” said Ed Turkel, manager, product marketing, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure organization, HP. “The combination of HP BladeSystem c-Class blade servers and HP ProLiant rack-based servers with the algorithms provided by Visual Numerics allows customers to run their applications with increased performance, while lowering costs and conserving power.”

“We are pleased to see IMSL C Library multi-core enablement for Windows HPC Server 2008," said Vince Mendillo, director of HPC marketing at Microsoft. "This offering extends Microsoft’s developer ecosystem to leverage the latest high performance computing technology for concurrent computing, while taking advantage of Visual Numerics algorithmic technology.”

The many new and updated algorithms in the IMSL C Library version 7.0 provide unique numerical analysis techniques to customers solving analytic problems in finance, business intelligence, data mining and other areas. For example:

• Finance customers will benefit from a new Feynman-Kac algorithm that solves Black-Scholes problems; a powerful Genetic Algorithm solver to solve problems such as identifying the best technical indicator from hundreds or thousands of indicators that will best predict future stock behavior; and Naïve Bayes classification techniques to, for example, classify financial news feeds to text mine for information.
• Business intelligence and data mining software developers can also leverage Genetic Algorithms for optimization and Naïve Bayes for classification and text mining problems. In addition, new classification capabilities in the Neural Network algorithm and new ways to select Auto_ARIMA models offer additional classification and forecasting techniques.
• Other new and updated functions, such as faster normal random number generation and new Kochanek-Bartels Cubic Splines, Non-central chi-square, and Non-central students’ T PDFs will benefit customers in finance, BI and many other industries.

Availability

Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for more than three decades. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today's business analytical needs.

Major corporations, academic institutions, and research laboratories worldwide use Visual Numerics' software tools, including such high profile companies as: SAP; Teradata; Barclays Global Investors; Humana, Sandia National Laboratories; and Boeing Company. This large and diverse customer base is supported through a direct sales force, wholly owned international subsidiaries, and international distributors. For more information about Visual Numerics, please visit www.vni.com.