Built on powerful and elegant principles, the core Mathematica language provides a uniquely deep and rich programming language that scales from rapid prototyping to large high-performance systems. Version 8.0 adds syntax-free linguistic input as a radical and innovative approach to programming. It also delivers many important performance features, such as automatic code generation, multicore parallelization, shared library linking, and GPU integration.

Wolfram|Alpha Integration »

( at beginning of input) — use free-form linguistics to generate Wolfram System output

() — enter free-form linguistics for conversion to inline Wolfram System input

WolframAlpha — get results in many possible forms from Wolfram|Alpha

New Compiler Features »

Compile — increase speed of computations by compiling to native code

CompilationTarget — an option that specifies the target runtime for the compiled function, including C code

RuntimeAttributes — an option that specifies the Listable attribute for the compiled function

Parallelization — an option that specifies whether a compiled function should run in parallel

Dynamic Library Linking »

LibraryFunctionLoad — load a function from a shared library into the Wolfram Language

LibraryFunction — a function that calls into a shared library

LibraryFunctionInformation — information on a library function

LibraryFunctionUnload, LibraryUnload — unload functions and libraries

FindLibrary, $LibraryPath — find libraries resolving system-specific file extensions

GPU Computing Using CUDALink »

CUDAInformation — list all CUDA device information

CUDAImageConvolve — convolve images with specified kernel

CUDAFunctionLoad — load a user-defined function to run on a GPU using CUDA

CUDAErosion  ▪  CUDADilation  ▪  CUDAFourier  ▪  CUDADot  ▪  ...

CUDAMemoryLoad  ▪  CUDAMemoryAllocate  ▪  SymbolicCUDAFunction  ▪  ...

GPU Computing Using OpenCLLink »

OpenCLInformation — list all OpenCL device information

OpenCLFunctionLoad — load a user-defined function to run on a GPU using OpenCL

OpenCLMemoryLoad  ▪  OpenCLMemoryAllocate  ▪  SymbolicOpenCLFunction  ▪  ...

Generate C from Mathematica Programs »

Export — export a Wolfram Language-compiled function into C code

CCodeGenerate — export a Wolfram Language-compiled function into C code

CCodeStringGenerate  ▪  SymbolicCGenerate  ▪  LibraryGenerate

Symbolic Representation of C Code »

ToCCodeString — convert a symbolic C expression into a string of C code

CAddress  ▪  CAssign  ▪  CBlock  ▪  CCall  ▪  CFor  ▪  CFunction  ▪  ...

CIf  ▪  CMember  ▪  CPointerType  ▪  CReturn  ▪  CStruct  ▪  ...

Call C Compilers from Mathematica »

CreateExecutable — create an executable from C code

CreateLibrary — create a library from C code

Conditionals »

ConditionalExpression — represent an expression that is valid when a condition is satisfied

New in Message Handling

Assert — test an assertion

$AssertFunction — specify a function to apply to assertions that fail

Performance Improvements in Parallel Computing

Parallelize (modified) — performance improvements, automatic distribution of definitions

LaunchKernels (modified) — kernel-launching performance improvements

DistributeDefinitions (modified) — definition-distribution performance improvements