January 19, 1998–Wolfram Research, Inc. has announced that Mathematica, the world’s only fully integrated technical computing system, will soon be available in a special UltraSPARC edition designed to take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture of the UltraSPARC processor.

“The 64-bit Mathematica running on an UltraSPARC system makes an extremely effective tool for both engineering and science. The new low-cost UltraSPARC systems bring enormous calculating power to a whole new category of potential users,” said Lars Hohmuth, Engineering Product Manager at Wolfram Research. “And, since Mathematica has been designed to be platform independent, users already familiar with Mathematica on Windows or Macintosh platforms can transfer their existing work seamlessly to the UltraSPARC platforms and gain an immediate boost in performance.”

Preliminary tests at Wolfram Research indicate that the 64-bit version of Mathematica performs with significantly improved speed when compared to the 32-bit Solaris version on the same platform. Throughput on some calculations is improved by as much as two hundred percent.

“Wolfram Research promotes technical empowerment, that is, giving users engaged in serious computing the best possible tools to accomplish their tasks,” said Hohmuth. “The UltraSPARC platform is a natural choice for Mathematica, with its speedy graphics and its number-crunching capabilities.”