arm@cadre.UUCP (04/29/85)
Thanks to all who responded to my query for information.
The results are briefly summarized below (in the words of a few
others).
Micros:
MuMath
- cost: under $200 if you shop around
- availability: easy
- usage; moderate (you get what you pay for)
Mini's and Larger:
Macsyma, Maple, Reduce, SMP
- cost: about what you'd expect all around $1k (though some,
particularly those distributed by universities are
less).
- availability: hardware dependent. if you are running vax
unix or vms, no problems. otherwise, wait...
as far as macsyma goes, no public domain around
(and even if there was, you wouldn't want it from
the sounds of it, the OLD versions were large and
buggy, but I got no bad news on the new one that
Symbolics sells).
-contacts and misc.: (I THINK these are right)
MACSYMA Group
Symbolics, Inc.
11 Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
(617)577-772
One of the few comparisons from someone who had a particular inkling:
From dailey%amvax@Cornell.ARPA Mon Apr 15 16:13:34 1985
We just installed SMP on our Vax 750. SMP was developed at Caltech and is
marketed by Inference Corp., 5300 W. Century Blvd., 5th Floor, L.A., Calif.
Tels: (213)417-7997 or (714)642-9057. The price for the binary code is $2000
for the first copy. We looked into both SMP & MACSYMA before making our
decision. SMP is faster than MACSYMA (I am told -- we are still testing it)
and has better problem solving capabilities than MACSYMA. Our initial
impression is that it is the best general purpose symbolic package available.
I am told, though, that MACSYMA can do anything SMP can do (again this is
untested-- we have MACSYMA on several machine are are running comparison
tests). MACSYMA is marketed Symbolics Corp. I don't know their address
but the tel. number is : (617)864-4660. The last I heard (last summer),
MACSYMA cost about $500. There is also a Vax version of MACSYMA -- VAXSYMA.
-John
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| John H. Dailey |
| Center for Applied Math. |
| Cornell U. |
| Ithaca, N.Y. 14853 |
| {decvax,ihnp4,cmcl2,vax135}!cornell!amvax!dailey (USENET) |
| amvax.dailey@cornell.arpa (ARPANET) |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
A short report: On the Design and Performance of the Maple System is
available from University of Waterloo giving a brief overview of the
architecture and comparing Maple, Macsyma and Reduce. Comparisons are
given for computing determinants, finding GCD's, solving systems of
equations, and for a set of miscellaneous problems. Not suprisingly Maple
outperforms Macsyma and Reduce on this self selected suite of problems, in
some areas perhaps justifiably so.
What is more important are the reasons why the systems vary. For example
on the GCD suite REDUCE does poorly because a) the flag for the comparable
algorithm (EZGCD) was not turned on, and b) the set of problems used all
had trivial (although random) factors for which the default algorithm in
REDUCE is known not to perform well. It is the default because it is
robust, not because it is efficient. The performance of Maple illustrates
the strength of it's multple algorithm architecture. But the problems with
the report also illustrate the problems with relying on benchmarks: it is
hard to evaluate the benchmarks without understanding the reasons why the
systems differ, and then deciding if those reasons are applicable to the
problems one intends to work with. For example for many (most?)
applications trivial GCD's do not exist, and the GCD suite is not
representative.
Using test suites to evaluate systems is only valid to the extent that the
tests themselves contain documentation about the features they are probing
for.
The report can be obtained from:
Symbolic Computation Group
Department of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
CANADA N2L 3G1
As a side note, a few people (who I wonder if they ever used Macsyma
or not) flamed about them to me as to outrageous price, etc.. I can't
vouch for any of that, but I must stick up for them in that a few weeks
after my initial post to the net, a received a followup phone call at my
office (a non-trivial operation since I did not post my phone number)
from Symbolics asking if I needed any more info on Macsyma. Symbolics
is alive and well on the net.
Use the above in good health.
UUCP: { akgua | allegra | cmcl2 | idis | ihnp4 | mi-cec | pitt
psuvax1 | sun | sunrise | vax135 } ! cadre ! arm
ARPA: arm@cadre
I am not sure who the above thoughts should be referenced to, I'll
be asking my cat in a few days...