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By Joe St Sauver (joe@oregon.uoregon.edu)
If you're working on Darkwing writing FORTRAN or C programs and have had a need for high-quality, well-tested numerical and statistical subroutines, you may already be familiar with Visual Numerics' IMSL Libraries. You may even already be using them. But now that the university has licensed IMSL for use on campus PC workstations, IMSL is more widely available.
Visual Numerics has been providing algorithms for mathematical and statistical computations under the IMSL name since 1970. IMSL Libraries are a comprehensive set of numerical recipes that can be embedded into your FORTRAN and C numerical analysis applications.
IMSL provides prewritten functions, or "building blocks," which eliminate the need to write code from scratch. These subroutines tend to be very well tested, computationally efficient, and numerically stable over a wide range of data inputs--unlike "hand rolled" routines that may be created by simply coding textbook algorithms. (While such "hand rolled" routines may be pedagogically simple, they are often computationally inefficient and can be unstable for asymptotic data.)
With IMSL, you can build applications that are portable across multiple platforms. The program features comprehensive statistical and mathematical functionality, and uses descriptive function names for intuitive programming. Extensive online documentation and error diagnostics are also included.
The University of Oregon has been participating in the Visual Numerics Academic Site Licensing program since its birth in 1996. The university's current site license for IMSL includes the following platforms on campus:
IRIX64
HP-UX
Linux
AIX
Solaris
Digital UNIX
Windows NT/95
IMSL Libraries are installed on Darkwing, Gladstone, and Oregon. If you're a programmer and you'd like to install IMSL Libraries for v. 4.01 (FORTRAN90) or 3.01 (C), please contact Hans Kuhn (346-1714; hak@oregon.uoregon.edu).