I just heard that the folks at The MathWorks have announced Release 2010b (R2010b) of their MATLAB and Simulink product families.

The expanded set of tools and features in this release include:

• New communications system design capabilities in MATLAB
• Automated PID controls tuning
• GigE Vision hardware standard support
• Enhanced Simulink and Stateflow support for creating reusable models

R2010b also introduces SimRF, which adds system-level modeling of RF receiver architectures. This release updates 84 MathWorks products, including Polyspace code verification products.

Updates to MATLAB that support advanced programming include custom enumerated data types, 64-bit integer arithmetic, and a number of enhancements to the development environment.

Other MATLAB family highlights in R2010b include:

• Parallel Computing Toolbox: GPU support of CUDA-enabled NVIDIA hardware for accelerated computation
• Control System Toolbox: New commands and graphical tools for modeling and automatically tuning PID controllers
• Image Acquisition Toolbox: Plug-and-play camera input using the GigE Vision hardware standard
• Communications Blockset: New System objects for communications system design in MATLAB
• Fixed-Income Toolbox: New pricing and valuation functions for mortgage pools and credit default swap agreements

With R2010b, Simulink offers a new signal type and subsystem enhancements that help reduce block counts, simulation time, and memory usage for large models. New capabilities for capturing design variants and configurations in Simulink and creating reusable state charts in Stateflow help teams manage design alternatives and reuse large, complex system models.

Other Simulink family highlights in R2010b include:

• Simulink HDL Coder:
  
  • New FPGA Workflow Advisor for critical path analysis and automated implementation on Xilinx and Altera FPGAs
  • Area-speed optimizations that include resource sharing, streaming, and distributed pipelining
  • Support for 42 blocks in Communications Blockset and Signal Processing Blockset
  • Support for the DO-254 standard
  Simulink Verification and Validation: Test-harness generation, data logging, and test execution API for analyzing model subsystems and for automating component testing during simulation and code verification (requires Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder)
  SimRF: New circuit-envelope and harmonic balance simulation technology built on the Simscape platform for modeling RF system architectures
  Polyspace Server for C/C++ and Polyspace Server for Ada: Web interface for viewing project metrics

The new release is available immediately and is being provided to users with current subscriptions to MathWorks Software Maintenance Service. Additional information on R2010b product updates is available at http://www.mathworks.com/products/new_products/latest_features.html.