Mathematica seamlessly integrates a numeric and symbolic computational engine, graphics system, programming language, documentation system, and advanced connectivity to other applications.

At a superficial level, Mathematica is an amazing yet easy-to-use calculator. However, Mathematica functions work for any size or precision of number, compute with symbols, are easily represented graphically, automatically switch algorithms to get the best answer, and even check and adjust the accuracy of their own results. This sophistication means trustworthy answers every time, even for those inexperienced with the mechanics of a particular calculation.

While working through calculations, a notebook document keeps a complete report: inputs, outputs, and graphics in an interactive but typeset form. Adding text, headings, formulas from a textbook, or even interface elements is straightforward, making online slide show, web, XML, or printed presentations immediately available from the original material. In fact, with notebook document technology, a fully customised interface can easily be provided so that recipients can interact with the content. The notebook is a fully featured, fully integrated technical document-creation environment.

If you're doing anything technical, think Mathematica--not just for computation but for modeling, simulation, visualization, development, documentation, and deployment.

Why Mathematica? Because this one integrated software system delivers unprecedented workflow, coherence, reliability, and innovation. Rather than requiring different toolkits for different jobs, Mathematica has been built from its inception to deliver one vision: the ultimate technical computing environment.

Top Reasons to Upgrade to Mathematica 9

1. Optimise your workflow with the Wolfram Predictive Interface

The Wolfram Predictive Interface makes it easy to find and use the power of Mathematica 9. The Input Assistant's context-sensitive autocompletion and dynamic highlighting help you discover and enter commands, and the next-computation Suggestions Bar offers optimized suggestions for what to do next. It's the next step in our ongoing Compute-as-You-Think initiative that began with free-form linguistic input.

Mathematica 9 introduces a full suite of social network analysis features including community detection, cohesive groups, and centrality measures, plus built-in links to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. It also adds new capabilities for network flows and new graph distributions.

3. Work with systemwide support for units

Mathematica 9 introduces a new unit system containing more than 4,500 different units, all integrated with Wolfram|Alpha's sophisticated unit interpretation system. From unit conversion to dimensional analysis, Mathematica provides you with all the tools you need to work with, and extract properties from, units and quantities.

4. Use survival analysis, random processes, and other expanded capabilities in data science and visualisation

Mathematica offers more statistical distributions than any other system, including specialized coverage of finance, medicine, and engineering. Mathematica 9 adds survival and reliability analysis; full support for random processes including queues, time series, and stochastic differential equations; a complete set of customizable gauges for dashboards and reports; and systemwide support for automatic legends for plots and charts.

5. Integrate R code into your Mathematica workflow

Mathematica 9 offers built-in ways to integrate R code into your Mathematica workflow, allowing data exchange between Mathematica and R and execution of R code from within Mathematica. With RLink, R users can use thousands of functions from across the full Mathematica system.

6. Deploy interactive documents with enhanced capabilities

Instantly create documents in the Computable Document Format (CDF) to present interactive charts of results, show dynamic models, or prototype your next application, and deploy them to the web or desktop. With Mathematica Enterprise Edition, you can deploy CDFs with live data and other enhanced features.

Mathematica 9 scales up performance to very large 2D- and 3D-volumetric images using out-of-core technology, and builds in a hardware-accelerated rendering engine for 3D images and volumes. Mathematica 9 also adds feature tracking, face detection, image enhancements, and other highly optimized algorithms to perform comprehensive image analysis.

8. Use integrated analog and digital signal processing

Filter and analyze sound, images, and multidimensional data with Mathematica 9's signal processing capabilities. Instantly design and deploy interactive filters and simulate them with Wolfram SystemModeler.

9. Visualize with new customizable gauges and built-in legends

Mathematica 9 adds a complete set of customizable interactive gauges for dashboards and reports, with built-in support for units. Systemwide support for automatic legends for plots and charts means legends with any style or layout can be added to arbitrary content.

Until now, developing with Mathematica almost always meant deploying with Mathematica. The introduction of the Player family dramatically broadens deployment options--making it practical to deliver Mathematica notebook interactivity and applications to virtually anyone.

Enter a new world where every document is interactive and every concept comes with an application. It's a transformation that's already accelerating research, education, technical communication--and progress. And it's possible through two major advances introduced with Mathematica 6 technology: automated interface development and full-featured Mathematica Player deployment engines. Together, these dramatically lower the threshold for building in interactivity and deploying applications--making both practical in a far wider range of cases than ever before.

Until now, developing with Mathematica almost always meant deploying with Mathematica. The introduction of the Player family dramatically broadens deployment options--making it practical to deliver Mathematica notebook interactivity and applications to virtually anyone. If you're making new content, you need Mathematica, but if you're interacting with existing content, check out Player and Player Pro.

Player Pro

Mathematica Player Pro is the professional platform for running interactive Mathematica applications and documents. Used either as a personal tool or as a high-level engine built in by application developers, Player Pro provides the power of Mathematica for a fraction of the cost.

Player Pro as an application delivery system
Player Pro is a single runtime yet it supports the functionality of Mathematica, giving users easy and cost-effective access to your Mathematica applications. And you can choose whether you want to bundle Player Pro to make a stand-alone application or deliver tools to an existing Player Pro user.

Player Pro as a personal tool
Interact with reports, applets, and documents from your colleagues without investing in Mathematica. If it's dynamic in Mathematica, it's dynamic in Player Pro.

Comparing the Player Family and Mathematica

Applications and interactive content can be deployed locally in a variety of cost-effective ways with Player, Player Pro, or Mathematica itself. Each solution is optimized for a different balance of capabilities, cost, and licensing model. Find out more below or contact us about which deployment would best suit your project. For server-side deployment options, use webMathematica.

Summary
Description	The free player with a Mathematica engine	The professional application delivery system for Mathematica	The ultimate tool for creating and interacting
Notebook support	View	View	View, edit, and create
Create new applications
Play applications interactively	Mouse-driven interaction for converted notebooks	Mouse and keyboard interactivity for all notebooks	Mouse and keyboard interactivity and content editing for all notebooks
Import/export	Wolfram-curated data only
Licensing	Free download	License fee	License fee
Documents and Display
Read and navigate notebooks
Slideshow mode
Run pre-generated animations
Open and close grouping cells
Notebook dynamic content enabled	.nbp-converted only
Create/edit notebooks
Change stylesheets
Save interface state
Annotate graphics
Print notebooks
Interactivity
Interactive with sliders, popup menus, radio buttons, locators, and checkboxes
Command-line control
Dynamic capabilities other than from Manipulates
View numerical values of sliders
Source-code encryption option
Input/Output
Keyboard entry to numerical fields
Keyboard entry to text fields
Import data (all formats)
Export data (all formats)	Copy to clipboard only
Save notebooks
Access curated data sources
Database connectivity
Dynamic document creation
Licensing
Unrestricted commercial use
Demonstrational uses by commercial or government organizations
Suppresses licensing stripe
Redistributable
Wolfram product licensing	Free for end user	Cost per user or through OEM or site licensing	Cost per user or site licensing
Platforms supported
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Windows Server 2003
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003
Windows 2000
Mac OS X 10.5 (Universal)
Mac OS X 10.4 (Universal)
Mac OS X 10.3.9
Linux x86 2.4 or later
Linux Itanium
Sun Solaris
HP-UX
IBM AIX

gridMathematica combines the power of the world's leading technical computing environment with modern computing clusters and grids to solve the most demanding problems in mathematics, science, engineering, and finance.

Easily control CPUs and GPUs to solve large problems fast.

Extending Mathematica's built-in parallelization capabilities, gridMathematica runs more tasks in parallel, over more CPUs and GPUs, for faster execution. With gridMathematica, process coordination and management is completely automated. Appropriate parallel tasks run faster with no need for code changes.

Providing a network-managed pool of 16 computation kernels, gridMathematica can be shared by a group of Mathematica users locally and can run on remote hardware to combine the power of multiple computers.

Parallel Computation Comes Standard with Mathematica

Every copy of Mathematica includes the capability for instant parallel computing at no additional charge. In single-machine configurations, Mathematica includes the ability to compute across four local processor cores and can be extended to make use of eight or more cores with the purchase of Mathematica Core Extension. Contact us for details »

Premier Service subscribers and gridMathematica users also receive complimentary use of Wolfram Lightweight Grid Manager, a program that makes it easy for users to find and use Mathematica computation kernels on remote machines and to create ad hoc grids powered by unused kernels. This application is also available for purchase.

gridMathematica Features

gridMathematica is an integrated extension system for increasing the power of your Mathematica licenses. Each gridMathematica Server gives Mathematica users a shared pool of 16 additional network-enabled Mathematica computation kernels for running distributed parallel computations over multiple CPUs.

There is no need to change your existing parallel code—just make gridMathematica Server available, and parallel programs can automatically use the additional CPU power. Whether you have a massive parallel task or just want a little boost, you can quickly grab some extra power when you need it.

gridMathematica provides:

Grid deployment of all of Mathematica's functionality, including its state-of-the art, super-fast numerical routines, image processing, statistics, and finance capabilities. It even supports remote access to GPUs and the distributed on-the-fly generation and compilation of parallel C code. If you can do it in Mathematica, you can do it over the grid.

A high-level parallel programming language, which automates much of the communication, synchronization, data transfer, and error recovery that usually makes grid computing so difficult to set up. With automatically serialized data transfer, you can send any structured data and programs to remote machines without needing to configure a common file system.

Support for HPC standards, including cluster managements systems Altair PBS Professional, Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server, Microsoft HPC Server, Platform LSF, and Sun Grid Engine and includes Wolfram Lightweight Grid software for systems without cluster management. Gigabit and high-speed networks are supported, and both CUDA and OpenCL GPU hardware are supported.

Key Advantages

gridMathematica provides an affordable, easy-to-use way to take full advantage of grid-computing hardware such as the multiprocessor machines and computing clusters that are now more accessible to many research groups, universities, and companies.

In addition to a price that is much lower than the price of similar solutions, gridMathematica brings other unique advantages to your parallel technical-computing environment.

• Computational Ability

  gridMathematica gives immediate access to the world's leading collection of algorithms and mathematical knowledge. It offers all of the same features and programmatic capabilities as Mathematica, including thousands of functions covering areas such as numerical computation, symbolic computation, graphics, and general programming. gridMathematica takes advantage of new Mathematica functionality such as high-speed numerical linear algebra, 64-bit platform support, improved communication bandwidth, and reduced latency.

• Ease of Development

  gridMathematica introduces only a small number of new parallel computing constructs, and users familiar with Mathematica can transition to gridMathematica without difficulty. Furthermore, programs written in Mathematica can be easily modified to run on a grid. Even users who are new to Mathematica can use its high-level programming capabilities and thousands of built-in functions and just a few simple commands to solve grid-computing problems that used to require thousands of lines of code in C or Fortran.

• Platform Independence

  gridMathematica is platform independent and can be used on dedicated multiprocessor machines as well as on homogeneous and heterogeneous clusters. The only technical requirement, apart from the ability to run Mathematica, is a TCP/IP connection between the individual computing nodes. This connection allows customers to run the same code on any available machines without any porting work. It also makes it easy to build ad hoc clusters out of underutilised computers or to take advantage of low-use periods.

• Special Pricing

  gridMathematica provides powerful computing capabilities at a price that won't hurt your organisation's pocketbook. gridMathematica is offered at a cost per node that is far less than what users would have to pay for an equivalent Network Mathematica installation. 

Lightweight Grid Manager

Wolfram Lightweight Grid Manager makes it easy to discover and connect to Mathematica computation kernels on remote computers.

It immediately makes your idle hardware and software resources available to your whole workgroup, lending more CPU power to parallel Mathematica tasks. Wolfram Lightweight Grid Manager is included with gridMathematica, is available for other Mathematica licenses as a free benefit of Premier Service, and is also available for purchase.

How it works:

Discovery

Using Wolfram Lightweight Grid Client, built into every copy of Mathematica since Version 7, users can immediately see all the computers that have been made available to them on their local network. All they have to do is select which ones they want to use and how many Mathematica computation kernels to run on each.

Acquisition
Once the grid is set up, parallel tasks are automatically distributed over all available kernels. Start-up, communication, failure recovery, shutdown, and queuing of local and remote tasks are all automated. The combined CPU power of all of your hardware is seamlessly utilized from the users' desktop copies of Mathematica.

Management
You are in control of the computers, deciding who has access to each machine and how many Mathematica computation kernels each can run. Logging tools let you monitor use and look for potential problems. All this is managed with a web interface.

A new era of integrated design optimisation

Increasing the fidelity of modeling has come to the forefront of driving design efficiency.

Yet many of today's tools are limiting: block diagrams that poorly represent key components; models just for simulation, not engineering analysis; and computation that's only basic numerics or that's not integrated at all.

Instead, SystemModeler uses versatile symbolic components and offers an all-in-one integrated workflow, all backed with the ultimate computation environment.

That gets you the power to model reality at high fidelity—driving insight, innovation, and results.

webMathematica is the clear choice for adding interactive calculations to the web. This unique technology enables you to create websites that allow users to compute and visualise results directly from a web browser.

webMathematica adds interactive calculations and visualisation to a website by integrating Mathematica with the latest web server technology.

How is webMathematica different from Mathematica?

webMathematica and Mathematica have the same underlying engine, but they provide fundamentally different user interfaces and are aimed at different types of users.

webMathematica offers access to specific Mathematica applications through a web browser or other web clients. The standard interface provided requires little training to use effectively. In most cases, users neither have to be familiar with Mathematica nor need to know they are using Mathematica.

In some sense, one can consider Mathematica a development environment for webMathematica sites. As an example, Mathematica is suitable for working on code that models some physical process--code that can then be placed into a webMathematica site to enable people to run the model and use its results for their regular work.

Advantages

webMathematica solves the problem of how to create and distribute solutions to technical computing problems quickly in today's networked environment.

You can develop new applications rapidly without requiring developers to learn new skills or to write a lot of Java code for mathematical algorithms, graphics, and input and output.

Developers do not have to worry about session management and error recovery. webMathematica takes care of all aspects of development, letting your R&D personnel concentrate on solutions, not the implementation details.

webMathematica lets you build, test,
and deploy specialized web services
for computation and visualization
at a faster pace and a lower cost
than ever before.

Use webMathematica content to draw more visitors to your corporate website or to build an enterprisewide computational services infrastructure that lowers the initial investment and cost of ownership by streamlining deployment and maintenance of technical computing applications. webMathematica even enables you to deliver applications to mobile devices so that your field personnel always have access to the latest tools.

This section gives details on some of the specific benefits that webMathematica offers to your organization and your developers for integration with your IT system.

The three most immediate technical advantages for your organization as a whole are:

Computational Ability

webMathematica provides a large library of Mathematica commands for web development. This allows you to build technical computing web services, including numerical, symbolic, and graphical applications that solve your daily technical computing problems quickly and easily. Also, Mathematica can import and export over 40 data, sound, and image formats, enabling users to process data online. To learn more about the benefits and features of Mathematica, see the Mathematica product pages.

Server-Based Computation

There is no software to buy, install, or maintain in order to use webMathematica sites. All that end users need is a web browser and, for some more-advanced features such as interactive 3D graphics, a Java runtime environment. This leads to significant savings over buying and maintaining user software and also makes sure that every end user always has the most recent version. An additional advantage is that websites enhanced by webMathematica can be accessed from any computer or web-enabled device in your organization.

Ease of Use

All that is needed to take advantage of webMathematica-enhanced sites is a web browser. All user interface elements are standard web GUI elements such as text fields, check boxes, and drop-down lists. This enables you to cut training time because your employees no longer have to learn different software applications. In many cases, no Mathematica experience is required.

Development

Solutions in minutes, not months, of development work

webMathematica makes all of the functionality of Mathematica available for website development. This easy access to the latest high-level computational algorithms as well as to powerful data analysis, graphics, and typesetting functions means that you can concentrate on solving your problems, not on programming solutions yourself. Regardless of the size of the application you are creating, developing it in webMathematica will cut your development time and make your application more robust as well as easier to use and maintain.

Key advantages of webMathematica for developers include:

Integration of Mathematica and HTML
webMathematica allows a site to deliver HTML pages that are enhanced by the addition of Mathematica commands. When a request is made for one of these pages, the Mathematica commands are evaluated and the computed result is inserted into the page. This is done with JavaServer Pages (JSP), a standard Java technology, making use of custom tags. After the initial setup, all that you need to write webMathematica applications is a basic knowledge of HTML and Mathematica.

Standard Server Technology
webMathematica is based on two standard Java technologies: Java Servlet and JSP. Servlets are special Java programs that run in a Java-enabled web server, which is typically called a "servlet container" (or sometimes a "servlet engine"). There are many different types of servlet containers that will run on many different operating systems and architectures. They can also be integrated into other web servers, such as the Apache web server.

Connection Technology
Other software can readily be incorporated into webMathematica with MathLink technology. It is particularly easy to connect Java into Mathematica with J/Link, providing many exciting possibilities for webMathematica development.

Mathematica Application Packages
webMathematica works seamlessly with the Mathematica application packages. They allow you to implement additional specialized functionality without months of development time.

Source Code
webMathematica ships with the source code both for J/Link and for the webMathematica technology available to the public. You are able to see exactly how the code works and to do a full security audit if you choose to do so.

Professionally Designed Web Page Templates
Included in webMathematica are professionally designed web page templates that you can modify for your needs, thus saving you design time.

System Integration

webMathematica is built on platform-independent standards such as HTML, Java, and Java Servlet technology.

For example, Java Servlet technology is supported, either natively or through plug-in servlet containers, by all modern web servers--including Apache, Microsoft IIS, and iPlanet--as well as by application servers such as IBM WebSphere.

The main advantages of webMathematica for system integrators include:

Easy Integration with Other Software
Other software can be incorporated readily into webMathematica with MathLink technology. For example, you can call functionality in the server to examine HTTP headers, create and inspect cookies, or use JDBC for database connectivity.

Full Separation of Server Administration and Content Generation
The server setup and content generation are completely separate so that system administrators and webmasters can set up the system once and then have others populate it. Content generators, be they engineers, writers, or instructors, do not have to understand or even have access to the underlying engine.

webMathematica Kernel Manager
An important part of webMathematica is the kernel manager, which calls Mathematica in a robust, efficient, and secure manner. The manager maintains pools of one or more Mathematica kernels; by maintaining more than one kernel, the manager can process more than one request at a time. Each pool takes care of launching and initializing its kernels. When a request is received for a computation, a kernel process is utilized to process the request and, upon completion, is returned to its pool. If any computation exceeds a preset amount of time, the kernel process is shut down and restarted. When the server is shut down, all of the kernel processes are also shut down. These features maximize the performance and stability of the server.

Additionally, Parallel Computing Toolkit offers the ability to run large calculations distributed over several sessions.