Almost five years on from the launch of its technical computing software suite Mathematica 2.0, Wolfram Research Inc has at last produced a significant upgrade of the tool in the shape of Mathematica 3.0. The Champaign, Illinois-based company says version 3.0 offers the realization of the visionary concept the company launched in 1988 (CI No 958), to create a single system to handle all aspects of technical computing in a coherent and unified way. Wolfram already boasts a user base of more than 1 million, spanning all continents in fields as varied as mathematics, science, art, music and law. It says Mathematica has become a standard in all of the Fortune 50 companies, the 15 major US government departments, and the 50 largest universities in the world. New features of Version 3.0 range from simple calculations, complex programming, advanced computations, data analysis and graphic modeling to sharing and publishing documents on the World Wide Web. Fully programmable, interactive web- publishable documents are supported, as are a new generation of algebraic computation and simplification; high speed compilation; automatic exporting of graphics; automatic arbitrary-precision control of numbers and optimized external program links. Mathematica 3.0 runs on more than 20 operating systems including Windows95 and NT, Mac OS, Solaris, Digital Unix, Irix, AIX, Linux and NeXTStep. It costs $1,300 including documentation and standard add-on packages. Upgrade, academic and site license discounts are available, and a student version is available for $140.
