Matlab vs.

Scilab

Rafael Brunner
 What‘s going on?
• Few words about Scilab‘s origin
• Introduction to Scilab:
- linear algebra
- programming
• Parts of my term work:
- sparse matrices
- Savitzky-Golay filter
- performance comparison
• My own experiences
 Scilab
• developed since 1990 at INRIA /
ENPC (France)
• open source
• free of charge
• high quality toolboxes available
- artificial network
- serial port
• similar to Matlab... yes, but...
 Demo
• Linear Algebra
- basics (how to enter matrices etc.)
- compute with matrices
- solving systems of equations
- hessenberg form
- LU-, QR-decomposition
- eigenvalues, -vectors
- SVD
 Programming
• introduction / overview
• example: poisson2d_kron
 Overview (1)
• for var = expr, statement; ...;
statement; end
• while expression, statements; end
• if expr then statements;
elseif expr then statements;
else statements;
end
 Overview (2)
• select expr
case expr1 then instructions1
...
case exprn then instructionsn
[else instructions]
end
 Overview (3)
• [lhs,rhs] = argn(0)
• error
• warning
 Example (demo)
• poisson2d_kron.m  poisson2d_kron.sci
• mfile2sci
2D-Poisson matrix
 Sparse matrices
• Three different algorithms to
generate the 2D-Poisson matrix:
- set the elements one by one
- block wise
- kronecker product
Performance comparison
 Solving a system Ax=b
• in this case Ax = 1
• pcg (preconditioned conjugate
gradients method)
• Scilab does not provide a pcg
method  Scilin (IRISA)
 Demo
• Solving Ax=1 for n=100
• 2D-Poisson matrix generated by
poisson2d_kron
Performance comparison
 Savitzky-Golay Filter
• measured data (slowly varying and
corrupted by random noise)
• reconstruction of the underlying
smooth function
Savitzky-Golay Filter
(DEMO)
 My own experiences
• editor
• translating
- build up new functions
- mfile2sci
 Summary
• speed
• graphics
• signal processing
Is Scilab an alternative to
Matlab?
 In my opinion:
Scilab is capable and can be
an alternative to Matlab.