Macsyma
Encyclopedia
Macsyma is a computer algebra system
that was originally developed from 1968 to 1982 at MIT as part of Project MAC and later marketed commercially. It was the first comprehensive symbolic mathematics system and one of the earliest knowledge based systems; many of its ideas were later adopted by Mathematica
, Maple
, and other systems.
,
William A. Martin
(front end, expression display, polynomial arithmetic)
and
Joel Moses
(simplifier, indefinite integration: heuristic/Risch). Bill Martin was in charge of the project until 1971, and Moses ran it for the next decade. Engelman and his staff left in 1969 to return to The MITRE Corporation
. Later major contributors to the core mathematics engine were:
Yannis Avgoustis (special functions),
David Barton (algsys),
Richard Bogen (special functions),
Bill Dubuque (limits, Grobner, TriangSys, indefinite integration: Bronstein, power series, number theory, special functions, functional equations, pattern matching, sign queries),
Richard Fateman
(rational functions, pattern matching, arbitrary precision floating-point),
Michael Genesereth (comparison, knowledge database),
Jeff Golden (simplifier, language, system),
R. W. Gosper
(definite summation, special functions, simplification, number theory),
Charles Karney (plotting),
John Kulp,
Ed Lafferty (ODE solution, special functions),
Stavros Macrakis (real/imaginary parts, compiler, system),
Barry Trager (algebraic integration, factoring, Grobner),
Paul Wang (polynomial factorization, limits, definite integration),
David Y. Y. Yun,
Gail Zacharias (Grobner),
and
Rich Zippel (power series, polynomial factorization, number theory, combinatorics).
Macsyma was written in Maclisp
, and was, in some cases, a key motivator for improving that dialect of Lisp in the areas of numerical computing, efficient compilation and language design. Maclisp itself ran primarily on PDP-6 and PDP-10
computers, but also on the Multics
OS
and on the Lisp Machine
architectures. Macsyma was one of the largest, if not the largest, Lisp programs of the time.
, MIT provided a temporary license for Macsyma code. This was almost immediately brought up on the new VAX-11/780 computer using a dialect of Maclisp, Franz Lisp
, written by Fateman's group. MIT reluctantly licensed versions of VAX Macsyma from Berkeley to about 50 universities, starting with Caltech, under condition that the licenses would be revoked when negotiations for a proper license were complete. Indeed this happened when the negotiation with Symbolics (see below) was complete. Symbolics was reluctant to license the VAX product, since VAX constituted competitive hardware to their own Lisp Machines and therefore suppressed the VAX software for five years. UC Berkeley also brought up copies of Macsyma on Motorola 68000
-based systems, most notably Sun
workstations. Symbolics suppressed those as well. At the same time Fateman worked to change the (now revoked) temporary license for Macsyma into something more permanent.
Ultimately, the United States Department of Energy
imposed on MIT the requirement that they release a copy into the National Energy Software Center (NESC) library in 1982, while allowing MIT to assert restrictions in terms of high price and no redistribution. This was intended to protect the technology transfer to Symbolics. (Such restrictions have been since lifted, 2002 or so.) This so-called DOE Macsyma had been rewritten at MIT in a pre-Common Lisp
dialect called NIL lisp, incompletely implemented on VAX/VMS
, an unpopular system in academia, where Berkeley VAX Unix
was common. DOE Macsyma formed the basis for the much-later open source Maxima system.
In 1981, Moses and Richard Pavelle, an MIT staff member and proponent of applying Macsyma to engineering and science, attempted to form a company to commercialize Macsyma. Pavelle had written many scientific papers using Macsyma. With the papers in hand, Pavelle and Moses approached several venture capital firms that showed interest in funding a Macsyma startup. With potential deals close to finalization, MIT suddenly decided that MIT personnel should not from profit directly from MIT developments. In early 1982, Macsyma was licensed by MIT to Arthur D. Little
, Inc., which became the broker for Macsyma and soon licensed Macsyma to Symbolics
in late 1982. Moses was forced out of the picture by ADL and Pavelle became the head of the Macsyma division at Symbolics. It was evident that Symbolics was not so much interested in the code as in keeping Macsyma out of the software catalog of its competitor in the Lisp Machine business, LMI
. The business arrangement between Symbolics and Arthur D. Little required a royalty payment to ADL of 15% of Macsyma gross sales. This absurd royalty led to speculation on the desire of MIT and ADL to see MACSYMA prosper. The development of Macsyma continued at Symbolics despite the fact that it was seen as a diversion from the sales of Lisp machine
s, which Symbolics considered to be their main business despite the fact that Macsyma sales and the leveraged sales of Lisp Machines reached 10% of overall sales at Symbolics within two years. Despite resistance from many in Symbolics, Macsyma was released for DEC
VAX computers and Sun workstations using Berkeley's Franz Lisp
in the early to mid 80s.
However, problems at Symbolics over the sales of Macsyma on computers other than Symbolics' eventually led to the decline of Macsyma sales. In the first half of 1986, Macsyma revenues were lower than in the first half of 1985, in a growing industry. Wolfram
's SMP program and Waterloo Maple
were growing at this time, although MACSYMA was easily superior to these other packages in symbolic math.
Pavelle ran the Macsyma division at Symbolics until early 1986. In the second half of 1986 Richard Petti became the manager of the Macsyma business to reduce the sales and avoid conflict with employees in Symbolics. Macsyma cut headcount but expanded its sales force and marketing, and focused its developers more on features that customers asked for. (For example, the Grobner algorithm developed in the 1970s at MIT was not installed in a shipping Macsyma until 1987.) In 1987, Macsyma annual revenues roughly doubled. MACSYMA became more user friendly: documentation and on-line help were reorganized and expanded; some command names were changed to be more mnemonic. Petti argued to Symbolics management that Macsyma was a 'strategic business unit' that should be funded based on its performance and potential, not based on the prospects of the main workstation business. However, Symbolics cut the Macsyma headcount after this period of sharp growth; Symbolics tried to use Macsyma as a tiny cash cow to fund the losses of the workstation business that was 30 times its size.
The greatest product weakness of Macsyma was its numerical analysis. Mastering symbolic math was a herculean task; but numerical capabilities were critical to get a piece of the much larger engineering and lower-end scientific markets. At MIT Macsyma had a link to the IMSL
(now Rogue Wave Software) numerical libraries, but this link was severed when Macsyma moved to Symbolics. Lisp developers at Symbolics generally believed that numerical analysis was an old technology that was not important for Lisp applications, so they declined to invest in it. Double precision
arithmetic in Macsyma (on a PC
version) was about six times slower than Fortran. Also Macsyma's matrices were implemented as lists of lists, which cost another factor of perhaps 5-10 in speed for key algorithms. Macsyma did not have many of the basic algorithms of numerical linear algebra, such as LU decomposition
.
In 1987-88, the Macsyma group tried to build a PC Macsyma with Gold Hill Lisp. (Earlier, Symbolics had killed its own project to build a Lisp compiler for standard computers to avoid competing with Lisp machine sales. This was a controversial move that, by some accounts, was undertaken without approval of senior management. Symbolics also declined to cooperate with Sun to make Lisp available on Sun workstations for the same reason.) Gold Hill Lisp was too unstable, and its weak architecture made it impossible for Gold Hill to eliminate the bugs. This was a crucial failure for Macsyma. It meant that Macsyma could not respond on PCs when Mathematica appeared on Apple computers in mid-1988. Macsyma appeared on Windows
PCs in August 1989 using the CLOE Lisp from Symbolics. However, the Macsyma staff was too small and lacked the mix of skills needed to add the kind of graphics, notebook interface and better numerics that Mathematica
had.
By 1989, it was clear to Petti that Symbolics would implode due to poor product strategy, and that it would take Macsyma with it. (Some product issues: (1) Symbolics' software was designed for MIT-class software developers without enough concessions to others. (2) Symbolics' world-class software was losing share in the market due to dependence on very high-cost hardware. (3) In moving to VLSI hardware in the mid-1980s, Symbolics converted from 36-bit word size to a 40-bit, without justification from the market for the enormous development cost of this change.) Macsyma could not assemble a buy-out team due to lack of cooperation from MIT. After keeping reasonably quiet since 1986 about the product issues, Petti tried in late 1988 to persuade Symbolics to adopt a software-only or board-level strategy; but the fourth president in four years would hear nothing of it. In 1990 Petti left Symbolics for a start-up.
(chairman, who had co-founded Symbolics
) and Richard Petti (president, who had turned around Macsyma for a time at Symbolics) by raising funds and purchasing the rights to Macsyma from the ailing Symbolics. Although the market was growing fast, Macsyma sales in 1991 and early 1992 were still falling rapidly. Macsyma's market share in symbolic math software had fallen from 70% in 1987 to 1% in 1992. By 1993, market growth had slowed and the market had standardized on Mathematica
and Maple. The competitors had development staffs that were 4-8 times as large as that of Macsyma Inc. throughout the 1990s.
In early 1995 the company shipped Macsyma 2.0.5, with many improvements: On Wester's large test of symbolic math, Macsyma 2.0.5 scored 10% better than Maple and 15% better than Mathematica. Although Macsyma 2.0.5 was still very slow at numerics, it had a greatly strengthened portfolio of numerical analysis and linear algebra routines. (In 1996 Macsyma added LAPACK
which greatly increased the speed of most numerical linear algebra.) .
The development team, at this time, included Jeff Golden (language, compiler, etc), Bill Gosper (special functions, summation), Howard Cannon (user interface, optimization), and consultant Bill Dubuque (integration, equation solving, database, optimization). Other developers made major contributions in numerical analysis, graphics, and help systems.
The company could not continue indefinitely to outperform staffs 4-8 times as large and reverse the market momentum. Market share did not increase above 2%, because the competitors were entrenched in all key accounts, converting to a new product is very costly in learning time, and market growth declined. Also, starting in 1992 or 1993, Mathsoft
engaged in a Pyrrhic
strategy of spending $10 million on direct mail at very low prices, which won much of the remaining growth in the symbolic math market, just when Macsyma Inc. was struggling to rebuild its world-class product.
In 1999, Macsyma were acquired by Tenedos LLC, a holding company that previously had purchased Symbolics. The holding company has not re-released or resold Macsyma, but Macsyma continues to be distributed by Symbolics.
-licensed version, called Maxima, based on the 1982 version of the DOE Macsyma, subsequently adapted for Common Lisp and enhanced by William Schelter. It is under active development, and can be compiled under several Common Lisp
systems. Downloadable executables for GNU
/Linux
, Microsoft Windows
, Mac OS X
and other systems, including graphical user interface
s are available. Maxima does not include many of the numerous features added during the period of commercial development between 1982–1999, but is a current, free, open codebase that includes numerous additional features, several alternative front ends, and works with a number of Common Lisp engines. While this has resulted in some incompatibilities between Macsyma and Maxima, programs written in the Macsyma algebraic language can often be run, with only minor changes, in either system.
Computer algebra system
A computer algebra system is a software program that facilitates symbolic mathematics. The core functionality of a CAS is manipulation of mathematical expressions in symbolic form.-Symbolic manipulations:...
that was originally developed from 1968 to 1982 at MIT as part of Project MAC and later marketed commercially. It was the first comprehensive symbolic mathematics system and one of the earliest knowledge based systems; many of its ideas were later adopted by Mathematica
Mathematica
Mathematica is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing...
, Maple
Maple (software)
Maple is a general-purpose commercial computer algebra system. It was first developed in 1980 by the Symbolic Computation Group at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada....
, and other systems.
Development
The project was initiated in July, 1968 by Carl Engelman,
William A. Martin
William A. Martin
William A. Martin was a computer scientist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.After graduating from Northwest Classen High School, where he was a state wrestling champion, he attended MIT where he received a bachelor's degree , master's and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering...
(front end, expression display, polynomial arithmetic)
and
Joel Moses
Joel Moses
Joel Moses is an Israeli-American computer scientist and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Joel Moses was born in Palestine in 1941 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1954. He attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York...
(simplifier, indefinite integration: heuristic/Risch). Bill Martin was in charge of the project until 1971, and Moses ran it for the next decade. Engelman and his staff left in 1969 to return to The MITRE Corporation
MITRE
The Mitre Corporation is a not-for-profit organization based in Bedford, Massachusetts and McLean, Virginia...
. Later major contributors to the core mathematics engine were:
Yannis Avgoustis (special functions),
David Barton (algsys),
Richard Bogen (special functions),
Bill Dubuque (limits, Grobner, TriangSys, indefinite integration: Bronstein, power series, number theory, special functions, functional equations, pattern matching, sign queries),
Richard Fateman
Richard Fateman
Richard J. Fateman is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.He received a BS in Physics and Mathematics from Union College in 1966, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1971. He was a major contributor to the Macsyma computer...
(rational functions, pattern matching, arbitrary precision floating-point),
Michael Genesereth (comparison, knowledge database),
Jeff Golden (simplifier, language, system),
R. W. Gosper
Bill Gosper
Ralph William Gosper, Jr. , known as Bill Gosper, is an American mathematician and programmer from Pennsauken Township, New Jersey...
(definite summation, special functions, simplification, number theory),
Charles Karney (plotting),
John Kulp,
Ed Lafferty (ODE solution, special functions),
Stavros Macrakis (real/imaginary parts, compiler, system),
Barry Trager (algebraic integration, factoring, Grobner),
Paul Wang (polynomial factorization, limits, definite integration),
David Y. Y. Yun,
Gail Zacharias (Grobner),
and
Rich Zippel (power series, polynomial factorization, number theory, combinatorics).
Macsyma was written in Maclisp
Maclisp
MACLISP is a dialect of the Lisp programming language. It originated at MIT's Project MAC in the late 1960s and was based on Lisp 1.5. Richard Greenblatt was the main developer of the original codebase for the PDP-6; Jonl White was responsible for its later maintenance and development...
, and was, in some cases, a key motivator for improving that dialect of Lisp in the areas of numerical computing, efficient compilation and language design. Maclisp itself ran primarily on PDP-6 and PDP-10
PDP-10
The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
computers, but also on the Multics
Multics
Multics was an influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964 in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
OS
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
and on the Lisp Machine
Lisp machine
Lisp machines were general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations...
architectures. Macsyma was one of the largest, if not the largest, Lisp programs of the time.
Commercialization
In 1979, in response to a request from Richard Fateman, then a professor at UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, MIT provided a temporary license for Macsyma code. This was almost immediately brought up on the new VAX-11/780 computer using a dialect of Maclisp, Franz Lisp
Franz Lisp
In computer programming, Franz Lisp was a Lisp system written at UC Berkeley by the students of Professor Richard J. Fateman, based largely on Maclisp and distributed with the Berkeley Software Distribution for the Digital Equipment Corp VAX...
, written by Fateman's group. MIT reluctantly licensed versions of VAX Macsyma from Berkeley to about 50 universities, starting with Caltech, under condition that the licenses would be revoked when negotiations for a proper license were complete. Indeed this happened when the negotiation with Symbolics (see below) was complete. Symbolics was reluctant to license the VAX product, since VAX constituted competitive hardware to their own Lisp Machines and therefore suppressed the VAX software for five years. UC Berkeley also brought up copies of Macsyma on Motorola 68000
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
-based systems, most notably Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
workstations. Symbolics suppressed those as well. At the same time Fateman worked to change the (now revoked) temporary license for Macsyma into something more permanent.
Ultimately, the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
imposed on MIT the requirement that they release a copy into the National Energy Software Center (NESC) library in 1982, while allowing MIT to assert restrictions in terms of high price and no redistribution. This was intended to protect the technology transfer to Symbolics. (Such restrictions have been since lifted, 2002 or so.) This so-called DOE Macsyma had been rewritten at MIT in a pre-Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...
dialect called NIL lisp, incompletely implemented on VAX/VMS
OpenVMS
OpenVMS , previously known as VAX-11/VMS, VAX/VMS or VMS, is a computer server operating system that runs on VAX, Alpha and Itanium-based families of computers. Contrary to what its name suggests, OpenVMS is not open source software; however, the source listings are available for purchase...
, an unpopular system in academia, where Berkeley VAX Unix
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
was common. DOE Macsyma formed the basis for the much-later open source Maxima system.
In 1981, Moses and Richard Pavelle, an MIT staff member and proponent of applying Macsyma to engineering and science, attempted to form a company to commercialize Macsyma. Pavelle had written many scientific papers using Macsyma. With the papers in hand, Pavelle and Moses approached several venture capital firms that showed interest in funding a Macsyma startup. With potential deals close to finalization, MIT suddenly decided that MIT personnel should not from profit directly from MIT developments. In early 1982, Macsyma was licensed by MIT to Arthur D. Little
Arthur D. Little
Arthur D. Little is an international management consulting firm originally headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and formally incorporated by that name in 1909 by Arthur Dehon Little, an MIT chemist who had discovered acetate. Arthur D. Little pioneered the concept of contracted...
, Inc., which became the broker for Macsyma and soon licensed Macsyma to Symbolics
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
in late 1982. Moses was forced out of the picture by ADL and Pavelle became the head of the Macsyma division at Symbolics. It was evident that Symbolics was not so much interested in the code as in keeping Macsyma out of the software catalog of its competitor in the Lisp Machine business, LMI
Lisp Machines
Lisp Machines, Inc. was a company formed in 1979 by Richard Greenblatt of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to build Lisp machines. It was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts....
. The business arrangement between Symbolics and Arthur D. Little required a royalty payment to ADL of 15% of Macsyma gross sales. This absurd royalty led to speculation on the desire of MIT and ADL to see MACSYMA prosper. The development of Macsyma continued at Symbolics despite the fact that it was seen as a diversion from the sales of Lisp machine
Lisp machine
Lisp machines were general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations...
s, which Symbolics considered to be their main business despite the fact that Macsyma sales and the leveraged sales of Lisp Machines reached 10% of overall sales at Symbolics within two years. Despite resistance from many in Symbolics, Macsyma was released for DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
VAX computers and Sun workstations using Berkeley's Franz Lisp
Franz Lisp
In computer programming, Franz Lisp was a Lisp system written at UC Berkeley by the students of Professor Richard J. Fateman, based largely on Maclisp and distributed with the Berkeley Software Distribution for the Digital Equipment Corp VAX...
in the early to mid 80s.
However, problems at Symbolics over the sales of Macsyma on computers other than Symbolics' eventually led to the decline of Macsyma sales. In the first half of 1986, Macsyma revenues were lower than in the first half of 1985, in a growing industry. Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram is a British scientist and the chief designer of the Mathematica software application and the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine.- Biography :...
's SMP program and Waterloo Maple
Maple (software)
Maple is a general-purpose commercial computer algebra system. It was first developed in 1980 by the Symbolic Computation Group at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada....
were growing at this time, although MACSYMA was easily superior to these other packages in symbolic math.
Pavelle ran the Macsyma division at Symbolics until early 1986. In the second half of 1986 Richard Petti became the manager of the Macsyma business to reduce the sales and avoid conflict with employees in Symbolics. Macsyma cut headcount but expanded its sales force and marketing, and focused its developers more on features that customers asked for. (For example, the Grobner algorithm developed in the 1970s at MIT was not installed in a shipping Macsyma until 1987.) In 1987, Macsyma annual revenues roughly doubled. MACSYMA became more user friendly: documentation and on-line help were reorganized and expanded; some command names were changed to be more mnemonic. Petti argued to Symbolics management that Macsyma was a 'strategic business unit' that should be funded based on its performance and potential, not based on the prospects of the main workstation business. However, Symbolics cut the Macsyma headcount after this period of sharp growth; Symbolics tried to use Macsyma as a tiny cash cow to fund the losses of the workstation business that was 30 times its size.
The greatest product weakness of Macsyma was its numerical analysis. Mastering symbolic math was a herculean task; but numerical capabilities were critical to get a piece of the much larger engineering and lower-end scientific markets. At MIT Macsyma had a link to the IMSL
IMSL Numerical Libraries
IMSL is a commercial collection of software libraries of numerical analysis functionality that are implemented in the computer programming languages of C, Java, C#.NET, and Fortran...
(now Rogue Wave Software) numerical libraries, but this link was severed when Macsyma moved to Symbolics. Lisp developers at Symbolics generally believed that numerical analysis was an old technology that was not important for Lisp applications, so they declined to invest in it. Double precision
Double precision
In computing, double precision is a computer number format that occupies two adjacent storage locations in computer memory. A double-precision number, sometimes simply called a double, may be defined to be an integer, fixed point, or floating point .Modern computers with 32-bit storage locations...
arithmetic in Macsyma (on a PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
version) was about six times slower than Fortran. Also Macsyma's matrices were implemented as lists of lists, which cost another factor of perhaps 5-10 in speed for key algorithms. Macsyma did not have many of the basic algorithms of numerical linear algebra, such as LU decomposition
LU decomposition
In linear algebra, LU decomposition is a matrix decomposition which writes a matrix as the product of a lower triangular matrix and an upper triangular matrix. The product sometimes includes a permutation matrix as well. This decomposition is used in numerical analysis to solve systems of linear...
.
In 1987-88, the Macsyma group tried to build a PC Macsyma with Gold Hill Lisp. (Earlier, Symbolics had killed its own project to build a Lisp compiler for standard computers to avoid competing with Lisp machine sales. This was a controversial move that, by some accounts, was undertaken without approval of senior management. Symbolics also declined to cooperate with Sun to make Lisp available on Sun workstations for the same reason.) Gold Hill Lisp was too unstable, and its weak architecture made it impossible for Gold Hill to eliminate the bugs. This was a crucial failure for Macsyma. It meant that Macsyma could not respond on PCs when Mathematica appeared on Apple computers in mid-1988. Macsyma appeared on Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
PCs in August 1989 using the CLOE Lisp from Symbolics. However, the Macsyma staff was too small and lacked the mix of skills needed to add the kind of graphics, notebook interface and better numerics that Mathematica
Mathematica
Mathematica is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing...
had.
By 1989, it was clear to Petti that Symbolics would implode due to poor product strategy, and that it would take Macsyma with it. (Some product issues: (1) Symbolics' software was designed for MIT-class software developers without enough concessions to others. (2) Symbolics' world-class software was losing share in the market due to dependence on very high-cost hardware. (3) In moving to VLSI hardware in the mid-1980s, Symbolics converted from 36-bit word size to a 40-bit, without justification from the market for the enormous development cost of this change.) Macsyma could not assemble a buy-out team due to lack of cooperation from MIT. After keeping reasonably quiet since 1986 about the product issues, Petti tried in late 1988 to persuade Symbolics to adopt a software-only or board-level strategy; but the fourth president in four years would hear nothing of it. In 1990 Petti left Symbolics for a start-up.
Macsyma, Inc.
Macsyma, Inc., was founded in 1992 by Russell NoftskerRussell Noftsker
Russell Noftsker is an American entrepreneur who notably founded Symbolics, and was its first chairman and president.-Biography:Steven Levy described Noftsker as "A compactly built blond with pursed features and blue eyes"...
(chairman, who had co-founded Symbolics
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
) and Richard Petti (president, who had turned around Macsyma for a time at Symbolics) by raising funds and purchasing the rights to Macsyma from the ailing Symbolics. Although the market was growing fast, Macsyma sales in 1991 and early 1992 were still falling rapidly. Macsyma's market share in symbolic math software had fallen from 70% in 1987 to 1% in 1992. By 1993, market growth had slowed and the market had standardized on Mathematica
Mathematica
Mathematica is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing...
and Maple. The competitors had development staffs that were 4-8 times as large as that of Macsyma Inc. throughout the 1990s.
In early 1995 the company shipped Macsyma 2.0.5, with many improvements: On Wester's large test of symbolic math, Macsyma 2.0.5 scored 10% better than Maple and 15% better than Mathematica. Although Macsyma 2.0.5 was still very slow at numerics, it had a greatly strengthened portfolio of numerical analysis and linear algebra routines. (In 1996 Macsyma added LAPACK
LAPACK
-External links:* : a modern replacement for PLAPACK and ScaLAPACK* on Netlib.org* * * : a modern replacement for LAPACK that is MultiGPU ready* on Sourceforge.net* * optimized LAPACK for Solaris OS on SPARC/x86/x64 and Linux* * *...
which greatly increased the speed of most numerical linear algebra.) .
The development team, at this time, included Jeff Golden (language, compiler, etc), Bill Gosper (special functions, summation), Howard Cannon (user interface, optimization), and consultant Bill Dubuque (integration, equation solving, database, optimization). Other developers made major contributions in numerical analysis, graphics, and help systems.
The company could not continue indefinitely to outperform staffs 4-8 times as large and reverse the market momentum. Market share did not increase above 2%, because the competitors were entrenched in all key accounts, converting to a new product is very costly in learning time, and market growth declined. Also, starting in 1992 or 1993, Mathsoft
Mathsoft
MathSoft was founded in 1984 by Allen Razdow and David Blohm to provide mathematical programs to students, teachers, and professionals. The company became most famous for its Mathcad software, a powerful application for solving and visualizing mathematical problems...
engaged in a Pyrrhic
Pyrrhic victory
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with such a devastating cost to the victor that it carries the implication that another such victory will ultimately cause defeat.-Origin:...
strategy of spending $10 million on direct mail at very low prices, which won much of the remaining growth in the symbolic math market, just when Macsyma Inc. was struggling to rebuild its world-class product.
In 1999, Macsyma were acquired by Tenedos LLC, a holding company that previously had purchased Symbolics. The holding company has not re-released or resold Macsyma, but Macsyma continues to be distributed by Symbolics.
Available versions
There is also a GPLGNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
-licensed version, called Maxima, based on the 1982 version of the DOE Macsyma, subsequently adapted for Common Lisp and enhanced by William Schelter. It is under active development, and can be compiled under several Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...
systems. Downloadable executables for GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
/Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and other systems, including graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
s are available. Maxima does not include many of the numerous features added during the period of commercial development between 1982–1999, but is a current, free, open codebase that includes numerous additional features, several alternative front ends, and works with a number of Common Lisp engines. While this has resulted in some incompatibilities between Macsyma and Maxima, programs written in the Macsyma algebraic language can often be run, with only minor changes, in either system.
External links
- Richard Petti's summary of the history of commercial Macsyma 30 October 2003
- The Macsyma Saga Richard Petti, 2 November 2003
- Symbolics Macsyma