2.3 WHAT IS MATLAB?

MATLAB is a commercial software product available from The Mathworks.¹ It consists of a main “engine” to perform computations, and several (optional) extended-function libraries (called “toolboxes”) for special-purpose applications. The main MATLAB engine has many robust mathematical functions built-in. It is an interpreted language—meaning that each line of source is parsed (analyzed and converted) in text form, without being converted into a native machine code executable. This means that it may be slower to execute the given code in many circumstances than equivalent code written for a specific processor.

It is worth noting that DSP systems are often developed in MATLAB, and implemented on the target hardware using the C language. This is because MATLAB provides an easier environment in which to design and test algorithms, and the so-called “target” devices (the end-product) often have limited memory, display, or other constraints. The C language (and by extension, C++) is able to produce assembly language code for target processors, which is optimized for that particular device’s instruction set. The MATLAB syntax is, in many ways, somewhat similar to the C programming language.