All posts by Jonas

Interesting/ useless

Visual Studio Debugging with the ILNumerics Array Visualizer: Now free for everyone!

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When we released the first ILNumerics Array Visualizer back in 2012 we knew that this would become a rather useful extension to every scientists’ toolbelt. And indeed: the Array Visualizer makes developing array based algorithms so much easier! It brings instant insight into all kind of array data during your Visual Studio debug session by showing  your arrays in a number of compelling visual ways. Hence, less time has to be spent on finding and removing bugs. The extension quickly became one of those tools which no developer wants to miss anymore.

ILNumerics Array Visualizer: Debugging in VisualStudio
Our Array Visualizer in full effect

From version 5 on, the ILNumerics Array Visualizer has been available not only for C# users (with or without using ILNumerics Array<T>), but also supports programmers working with other popular languages, namely: C/C++, FORTRAN, F#, and VisualBasic. It visualizes nearly everything you have a reference for, including ILNumerics arrays, .NET arrays, plain pointers and memory addresses (.NET or C/ C++), and even FORTRAN arrays!

Because its features were so compelling we expected other companies to adopt this idea and offer similar tools. But in fact, as of today, we are not aware of any comparable visualizer extension on the market.

The Array Visualizer is aligned with our mission to support the creation of technical applications in industrial contexts. However, the core advantage of ILNumerics has always been the ability to create demanding numerical algorithms in Matlab and numpy style faster and directly in .NET – and to reach a higher level of performance during execution.

We focus on that goal and decided to release the Array Visualizer to the community. For free. We will continue maintaining and improving the Array Visualizer in the future. This may include to distribute it as a stand alone tool – outside of the ILNumerics distribution package.

For now, you can add the Array Visualizer extension to your machine for free by using our online shop. 

  1. Register for an account: https://ilnumerics.net/account.html
  2. Sign-in to your account and visit our online shop.
  3. Add a [New Seat]. The new seat opens for configuration. Here, you may add any ILNumerics modules needed. Note that the ‘Visual Studio Tools’ module is already selected (price: 0,00 EUR). The Array Visualizer is included here:2020-11-26 20_06_31-ILNumerics Account
  4. Complete your order. If you haven’t selected any other modules besides the Visual Studio Tools item, your price will still be 0,00 EUR and no payment will be necessary (no credit card either).
  5. After finishing your order you will receive your invoice by email. The invoice contains your license key.2020-11-26 20_15_10-ILNumerics Billing
  6. If you haven’t done yet: download ILNumerics. You will find the latest distribution in your account in the [Downloads] tab. Install the package on your machine.
  7. Activate your seat. This can be done right within the Visual Studio options dialog, in the ILNumerics -> Licenses tab.  Further details on activation: https://ilnumerics.net/license-activation.html

That’s it! You are now ready to start visualizing the heck out of your memory! Start here: https://ilnumerics.net/visualstudio-extension.html

Oh, and please don’t forget to send us some screenshots of your Visual Studio debugging sessions with the ILNumerics Array Visualizer. We’ll make a movie out of them and enjoy them during our next team meetup on a huge screen with chips and beer!

C#, Matlab, Numerical Algorithms, R, Scientific Computing

Why MINT-students should learn C# instead of Matlab and R

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For students who want to prototype and code, there’s a wide range of domain specific programming languages around: R or Matlab – just to name a few – make it quite easy to design new algorithms, analyze data and to plot complex functions. However, bringing innovation from science to enterprise-ready software applications still costs lots of effort, manpower and experience.

Microsoft’s C# has the potential to fully close this gap: in combination with the ILNumerics numerical library, it becomes the perfect environment both for prototyping and creating powerful software. But why is it that the mainstream in science still doesn’t make use of the power of C#, .NET and Visual studio? Well, let’s have a closer look at computing in academia.

Scientific Computing vs. Real-Life Applications

Like in many other areas in academia, the main reason for sticking to out-of-date techniques is “tradition”. That’s why in 2020 there is still a huge gap between mathematical prototyping and industrial-grade production software. Scientists often aim at creating an algorithm solely in order to validate a new model or theory. Once done, they produce a couple of nice looking plots, publish a paper or two and: bye bye.

Unless… there is a greater use to it!

Turning Prototypes into Products

If a model created in science has the potential to earn serious money,  the algorithm created by a mathematician, physicist or microbiologist has to be transformed into something ‘production ready’ that can be used in real life.

This is where many development teams in the biggest enterprises are stuck today: Everytime they want to adapt innovation from science for their own software applications, they have to translate Matlab, numpy or R codes into a modern, managed SW framework. This transformation is where the pain starts: It has to be done! And not only once, but with each update. This causes a whole lot of redundant and boilerplate code – each and every time. This work is expensive: It requires expert knowledge, extensive testing and additional maintenance. And it significantly delays the time to market!

C# + ILNumerics: Perfect Match for High Performance Applications

This pain needs to stop. And this is where modern general purpose languages come into play. C# for example fulfills all the requirements for the design of numerical algorithms! Developer tools such as Visual Studio – especially if complemented with the ILNumerics Array Visualizer und its highly efficient n-dimensional arrays – allow scientists and software developers to design and prototype their algorithms by directly using production-ready tools.

That means: the painful and time consuming transformation from domain specific prototyping code to an industrial software product is no longer necessary, which allows for huge time savings – often more than 50 percent!

Maths, Physics, Engineering: Boost Innovation now!

However, most established scientists in academia today still stick to Matlab, numpy and R – even though it’s not necessary anymore. But fortunately, a new generation of scientists has started to push innovation at universities ahead. They are often familiar with modern programming languages like C#, and they want to use their knowledge to combine academic prototyping with state of the art software development. This new generation will modernize the intersections between science and industry. Their skills will allow companies all over the world to realize all their innovative potential in a much shorter period of time.

That’s why we think any science and engineering student should get familiar with modern programming languages as early as possible: It will help him or her to boost innovation in their field all over the world!

.NET, C#, Features, ILNumerics, Interesting/ useless, Scientific Computing, Visualization

ILNumerics for Scientists – Going 3D

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Recap

Last time I started with one of the easiest problems in quantum mechanics: the particle in a box. This time I’ll add 1 dimension and we’ll see a particle in a 2D box. To visualize its wave function and density we need 3D surface plots.

2D Box

This time we have a particle that is confined in a 2D box. The potential within the box is zero and outside the box infinity. Again the solution is well-known and can be found on Wikipedia. This time the state of the wave function is determined by two numbers. These are typically called quantum numbers and refer to the X and the Y direction, respectively.

The absolute size of the box doesn’t really matter and we didn’t worry about it in the 1D case. However, the relative size of the length and the width make a difference. The solution to our problem reads

$\Psi_{n,k}(x,y) = \sqrt{\frac{4}{L_x L_y}} \cdot \sin(n \cdot \pi \cdot x / L_x) \cdot \sin(k \cdot \pi \cdot y / L_y)$

The Math

Very similar to the 1D case I quickly coded the wave function and the density for further plotting. I had to make sure that the arrays are fit for 3D plotting, so the code looks a little bit different compared to last post’s

     public static ILArray<double> CalcWF(int EVXID, int EVYID, double LX, double LY, int MeshSize)
     {
        ILArray<double> X = linspace<double>(0, LX, MeshSize);
        ILArray<double> Y = linspace<double>(0, LY, MeshSize);

        ILArray<double> Y2d = 1;
        ILArray<double> X2d = meshgrid(X, Y, Y2d);

        ILArray<double> Z = sqrt(4.0 / LX / LY) * sin(EVXID * pi * X2d / LX) * sin(EVYID * pi * Y2d / LY);

        return Z.Concat(X2d,2).Concat(Y2d,2);
     }

Again, this took me like 10 minutes and I was done.

The Visualization

This time the user can choose the quantum numbers for X and Y direction, the ratio between the length and the width of the box and also the number of mesh points along each axis for plotting. This makes the visualization panel a little bit more involved. Nevertheless, it’s still rather simple and easy to use. This time it took me only 45 minutes – I guess I learned a lot from last time.

The result

Here is the result of my little program. You can click and play with it. If you’re interested, you can download the Particle2DBox source code. Have fun!

Particle2DBoxThis is a screenshot of the application. I chose the second quantum number along the x axis and the fourth quantum number along the y axis. The box is twice as long in y direction as it is in x direction. The mesh size is 100 in each direction. On the left hand side you see the wave function and on the right hand side the probability density.

.NET, C#, ILNumerics, Scientific Computing

ILNumerics for Scientists – An easy start

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Motivation

I’ve been working as a scientist at universities for 10 years before deciding to go into industry. The one thing I hated most was coding. At the end of the day coding for scientists is like running for a football player. Obviously, you need it but it’s not what you’re here for.

I really dreaded the coding and the debugging. So much precious time for something that was so clear on paper and I just wanted the solution of my equations to see whether my idea made sense or not. More often than not scientists find that their idea was not so great and now they had spent so much time coding just to find out that the idea didn’t work. Continue reading ILNumerics for Scientists – An easy start →

.NET, C#, ILNumerics

Troubleshooting: Adding ILNumerics 3D Controls to the VS Toolbox

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Adding ILNumerics visualizations to Visual Studio based projects has become a quite convenient task: It’s easy to use the ILNumerics math library for own projects in .NET. However, from time to time users have problems adding the ILNumerics controls to their Visual Studio Toolbox window.

Update: Since ILNumerics Ultimate VS version 4 this issue has been solved once for all. Simply install the MSI installer and find the ILNumerics ILPanel in the toolbox for all applicable situations.

That’s what a post on Stack Overflow from earlier this year was about: A developer who wanted to use our C# math library for 3d visualizations and simulations wasn’t able to access the ILNumerics controls. “How can I locate it?”, he was wondering. “Do I have to make some changes to my VS?”

Adding ILNumerics Controls to the Visual Studio Toolbox manually

If the ILNumerics Ultimate VS math library is installed on a system, normally the ILNumerics controls are automatically listed in the Visual Studio toolbox on all supported versions of Visual Studio. However, if that’s not the case there’s a way to a add them manually: After clicking right onto the toolbox, you can select “Choose Item”. The dialog allows you to select the assambly to load the controls from – that’s it! You will find the ILNumerics.dll in the installation folder on your system. By default this directory is located at:  “C:\Program Files (x86)\ILNumerics\ILNumerics Ultimate VS\bin\ILNumerics.dll”.

However, if that doesn’t work straightaway, it often helps to clear the toolbox from any copies of custom controls before – simply right-click it and choose “Reset Toolbox”.

Need help? ILNumerics Documentation and Support

You want to know more about our math library and its installation? Check out our documentation and the Quick Start Guide! If you have any technical questions, have a look at our Support Section.

Interesting/ useless

Using LAPACK in C#/.NET: Linear Equotation Systems in ILNumerics

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If you install a math library to your .NET/C# project, LAPACK will be probably one of the key feature you expect from that: The routines provided by LAPACK (which actually means: “Linear Algebra Package”) cover a wide range of functionalities needed for nearly any numerical algorithm, in natural sciences, computer science, and social science.

The LAPACK software library is written in FORTRAN code – until 2008 it was even written in FORTRAN 77. That’s why adding LAPACK functions to an enterprise software project written in Java or C#/.NET can be quite a demanding task: The implementation of native modules often causes problems regarding maintainability and steadiness of enterprise applications.

Our LAPACK implementation for C#/.NET

ILNumerics offers a convenient implementation of LAPACK for C# and .NET: It provides software developers both the execution speed of highly optimized processor specific native code and the convenience of managed software frameworks. That allows our users to create powerful applications in a very short time.

For linear algebra functions ILNumerics uses the processor-optimized LAPACK library by the MIT and Intel’s MKL. ILMath.Lapack is a concrete interface wrapper class that provides the native LAPACK functions. The LAPACK wrapper is initialized when a call to any static method of ILMath is made. Once the corresponding binaries for your actual architecture have been found, consecutive calls will utilize them in a very efficient way.

The MKL is utilized (and needed) for all calls to any fft(A) function, for matrix decompositions (like for example linsolve, rank, svd, qr etc.). The only exception to that is ILMath.multiply – the general matrix multiplication. Matrix multiplication is just such an often needed feature, a math library simply could not go without. So we decided to implement ILMath.multiply() purely in managed code. The good thing: it is not really far behind the speed of the processor optimized version! If MKL binaries are found at runtime, those will be used, of course. But in the case of their absence, the managed version should work out just fast enough for the very most situations.

In most cases using this kind of .NET/C# LAPACK implementation means: faster results and more stable software applications. Learn more about Linear Equation Systems and other features of ILNumerics in our Documentation.

.NET, C#, ILNumerics, Scientific Computing, Visualization

C# for 3D visualizations and Plotting in .NET

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2D and 3D Visualizations are an important feature for a wide range of domains: both software developers and scientists often need convenient visualization facilities to create interactive scenes and to make data visible. The ILNumerics math library brings powerful visualization features to C# and .NET: ILView, the ILNumerics Scene Graph API and its plotting engine. We’d like to give an overview over our latest achievements.

ILView: a simple way to create interactive 3d visualizations

We have created ILView as an extension to our interactive web component: It allows you to simply try out ILNumerics’ 2d and 3d visualization features by chosing the output format .exe in our visualization examples. But that’s not all: ILView is also a general REPL for the evaluation of computational expressions using C# language. ILView is Open Source – find it on GitHub!

Screenshot of ILView
Using ILView for interactive 3D Visualization

ILNumerics Scene Graph: realize complex visualizations in .NET

The ILNumeric’s scene graph is the core of ILNumerics’ visualization engine. No matter if you want to create complex interactive 3D visualizations, or if you aim at enhancing and re-configuring existing scenes in .NET: The ILNumerics scene graph offers a convenient way to realize stunning graphics with C#. It uses OpenGL, GDI, and it’s possible to export scenes into vector and pixel graphics.

Screenshot of an interactive 3D scene
Using C# for 3D visualizations: the ILNumerics Scene Graph

Scientific Plotting: visualize your data using C#

With ILNumerics’ visualization capabilities, C# becomes the language of choice for scientists, engineers and developers who need to visualize data: Our plotting API and different kinds of plotting types (contour plots, surface plots etc.) make easy work of creating beautiful scientific visualizations.

Screenshot of a Surface Plot in ILNumerics
Scientific Plotting in .NET: A Surface Plot created with ILNumerics
Interesting/ useless

Are you afraid of software developers?

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In the 1980s and 1990s software developers had to face a bunch of bad prejudices: They were known to be sociophobic nerds, neglecting their real lifes in favor of hanging in front of the computer for writing code, discussing in hacking newsgroups and eating pizza.

Even though we’re still not living in a society of hackers, geekism has become mainstream. Not only the fact that most people spend a lot of time with their smartphones and computers: nerd culture is more popular than ever. Some weeks ago Luke Maciak wrote a nice article on that topic.

The establishment towards nerdism changed, and so did the general attitude towards software developers. In a way, programmers have become role models for the 21st century – not at least because they are an important factor regarding economic growth in the digital age.

However, having visited some events for start ups in Berlin has made us come across a new kind of prejudices towards developers. Most start ups in Berlin are more or less in the tech business: They create games, offer online services or develop facebook apps. Many of them have no CTOs in their teams, though. That’s why they employ freelancer developers.

Working together with software developers on this early stage of business is challanging for start ups. They often don’t have much money to spend: that’s why the wages developers ask for seem to be too high. Start ups want a strong team spirit: that’s why they don’t like developers to work from another place than their office.

But the most important problem is: As most founders aren’t developers theirselves, they don’t understand what their expensive freelancer is actually doing when he spends his days coding at home. For theis reason, young CEOs often become nervous: As their business depends on software, they feel like being on their developer’s mercy because he seems to be the only one who is actually able to understand his code.

In most cases we can calm down our fellows: Developers are used to get paid well and work when and where they want to. There’s also no reason to be afraid that no other developer would find his way into your software’s code: Modern languages and frameworks like .NET, Java or Ruby make most applications clean and well organized. So even in case you really have to split up with your developer, it won’t be that hard to find a new one who can continue his or her antecessor’s work.

In other words: In most cases there’s no need to be afraid of software developers. It’s pretty convenient to monitor enterprise software development these days.

However, the following question shows that this kind of convenience hasn’t arrived everywhere yet: “Why does scientific computing today still use only technology of the last century?”, someone claimed on reddit some days ago. This kind of question is the reason we have created ILNumerics: For the first time it brings the convenience and the improved efficiency and maintainence of modern managed languages to the development of numerical algorithms and 3d visualizations.