MathWorks Launches Release 2017a

MathWorks introduced Release 2017a (R2017a) with a range of new capabilities in MATLAB and Simulink. R2017a includes a new product, Automated Driving System Toolbox, which helps design, simulate and test ADAS and autonomous driving systems. R2017a also includes updates and bug fixes to 86 other products.

MATLAB product family updates include the following for MATLAB:

• Interactive figure updates in the Live Editor, including title, labels, legend and other annotations, as well as the ability to copy live script outputs to other applications​;
• heatmap chart functions for visualizing data; and
• ​more functions for operating on tall arrays, including ismember, sort, conv, and moving statistics functions​​​​​.

New updates for the Econometrics Toolbox include the following:

• Bayesian linear regression model for analyzing the relationship between a response and a set of predictor variables and
• vector autoregressive model for analyzing multivariate time series data, including exogenous predictors.

Simulink product family updates include the following:

• Simulink Project upgrade for easily updating all files in a project to the latest release,
• parsim command for directly running multiple parallel simulations,
• streaming for large input signals from MAT files without loading the data into memory,
• reduced bus wiring to quickly group signals as buses and automatically create bus element ports for fewer signal lines between and within subsystems, and
• automatic port creation for adding inports and outports to blocks when routing signals.

 Signal processing and communications updates include the following:

• Antenna Designer app for interactively choosing and analyzing antennas with desired characteristics​, and
• for the Communications System Toolbox, modeling and simulation for spatially-defined MIMO channels operating in multipath and scattering propagation scenarios.

Code generation updates include the following:

• Cross-release code integration for reusing model reference code generated from previous releases,
• dynamic memory support for MATLAB Function block simulation and code generation,
• HDL code generation from IEEE standard single-precision floating-point operations, and
• support for probing and capturing internal FPGA signals to analyze in MATLAB or Simulink.

R2017a is available immediately worldwide. For more information, see R2017a Highlights.

Sources: Press materials received from the company.