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Matlab of OSX - What is X11

kjs862

kjs862

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 21, 2004
1,298
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I just got myself a copy of Matlab for OS X, and whenever I run the application, another application called X11 opens up? I'm positive I have the right version, the one made for mac, but is this some sort of emulation piece to the puzzle?

I'm guessing it has to do something with the application when first wrote being optimized for windows rather than osx. If this is the case I should have kept my mouth shut of work saying my powermac g5 and run circles around their window machines =/
 
X11.app is apple's implementation of X window system that provide a compatibility layer on top of OSX for some ported unix/linux apps.
 
X11 comes standard in GNU/linux and BSD.

Apple has its own X11 implementation so nix apps work on apple, but its really buggy (so I've read)
 
The Mac version of MATLAB is a slightly modified version of the Unix/Linux version of MATLAB.

Rather than creating an Aqua/Mac UI, they used the existing Unix X11 UI. It is not emulation, and it does not affect the speed of the application (though it might look a little odd next to ordinary Mac apps.)
 
Am3822 said:
There's an update / fixed version of X11.app that can be downloaded from here. Better ready their explanations, though, before installing.
Click to expand...

The one included with 10.5 isn't all that bad; I've used Matlab extensively and there certainly isn't any particularly wrong with it. I'd love to see a 'native' version, but the one using Xorg/X11 is good enough.
 
Thanks everyone for the information, certainly clears things up.

So how does matlab on mac stack up against matlab on windows?
 
kjs862 said:
Thanks everyone for the information, certainly clears things up.

So how does matlab on mac stack up against matlab on windows?
Click to expand...

Its pretty good, given that a large chunk is java (I think it is) you best make sure you have atleast 2gb so that usage isn't painful. Compared to Windows? about the same - some small differences, but I feel they're equal in quality - just make sure you install the latest updates though :D
 
kaiwai said:
The one included with 10.5 isn't all that bad; I've used Matlab extensively and there certainly isn't any particularly wrong with it. I'd love to see a 'native' version, but the one using Xorg/X11 is good enough.
Click to expand...

It can't even do full screen, so it's basically crippled compared to the Tiger version of X11.

Not to fault Benjamin Reed or anything, but full screen support would be quite nice.

EDIT: Octave has no integrated IDE (apparently Matlab has one, according to my roommate), but it will run Matlab .m files perfectly fine. I think the major difference is that nested functions aren't allowed in Octave.
 
Matlab in OSX Speed Problems

Hello, I'm using MAtlab 2008a on a 2.4 Penryn MBP w/4GB and have encountered a very bizarre problem. It's about 3 times slower than it should be. I have triple boot XP/OSX/Ubuntu and Matlab installed on all three partitions. Linux benches significantly ( around 3 times ) faster than OSX,
what is the problem here?
 
OSX speed problem

I can confirm that Matlab (2007b) on OS X (10.5.5) is much slower than on Ubuntu (8.06)
 
alanlindsay said:
Hello, I'm using MAtlab 2008a on a 2.4 Penryn MBP w/4GB and have encountered a very bizarre problem. It's about 3 times slower than it should be. I have triple boot XP/OSX/Ubuntu and Matlab installed on all three partitions. Linux benches significantly ( around 3 times ) faster than OSX,
what is the problem here?
Click to expand...

Did you ever find out what was happening? 10% I can believe, but 3 times!

gurkpeter said:
I can confirm that Matlab (2007b) on OS X (10.5.5) is much slower than on Ubuntu (8.06)
Click to expand...

Slower at what, the interface or m-files? Do you have any benchmarks, or idea how much slower? Have you got the Linux x86-64 matlab version running on a mac, with >2gb matrices?

The os x version seems to be fast on my mac pro, but I haven't compared. I've been running the os x 64bit prototype which is slightly better. If the linux speed is a big difference, I'll have to get myself the linux version. Thanks for any info.
 
I have a feeling that Apple's Java runtime implementation is the culprit. Other Java applications (especially ones that use Swing, such as NetBeans) are also much slower on OS X than they are on Windows or Linux.
 
The UI might be less responsive. However, the actual math is done with libraries provided by Intel written in C (I think), so any decreases in speed are due to UI stuff, not due to actual math-related stuff. You can be certain that if you were actually running any calculations, the calculations themselves would run at the same speed. If you really want you can run MATLAB in command-line only mode.
 
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