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Welcome to the launch of our new blog area, Semiconductor Design and Verification! The mission is to empower engineers and designers in the semiconductor industry by streamlining architectural exploration, optimizing the post-processing of simulations, and enabling early verification with MATLAB and Simulink.
Meet Our Authors
We are thrilled to have two esteemed authors:
@Ganesh Rathinavel and @Cristian Macario Macario have both made significant contributions to the advancement of Analog/Mixed-Signal design and the broader communications, electronics, and semiconductor industries. With impressive engineering backgrounds and extensive experience at leading companies such as IMEC, STMicroelectronics, NXP Semiconductors, LSI Corporation, and ARM, they bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our blog. Their work is focused on enhancing MathWorks' tools to better align with industry needs.
What to Expect
The blog will cover a wide range of topics aimed at professionals in the semiconductor field, providing insights and strategies to enhance your design and verification processes. Whether you're looking to streamline your current workflows or explore cutting-edge methodologies, our blog is your go-to resource.
Call to Action
We invite all professionals and enthusiasts in the semiconductor industry to follow our blog posts. Stay updated with the latest trends and insights by subscribing to our blog.
Don’t miss the first post: Accelerating Mixed-Signal Design with Early Behavioral Models, where they explore how early behavioral modeling can accelerate mixed-signal design and enhance system efficiency.
Here presented MATLAB code is designed to create a seamless loop animation that visualizes an isosurface derived from random data.
This entry, titled "The Scrambled Predator's Cube", builds upon my previous work and has been adapted to include dynamic elements.
MATLAB Shorts Mini Hack: The Scrambled Predator's Cube
In this explanation, I will break down the relatively short code, making it accessible whether you are a beginner in MATLAB or an experienced user. Let's go through the MATLAB code step by step to understand each line in detail.
Code Breakdown
d = rand(8,8,8);
Random Data Generation: This line creates a three-dimensional array d with dimensions 8×8×8 filled with random values. The rand function generates values uniformly distributed in the interval (0,1). This array serves as the input data for generating the isosurface.
iv = .5 + (f / 10000);
Isovalue Calculation: Here, the isovalue iv is computed based on the frame number f. The expression f / 10000 causes iv to increase very slowly as f increments. Starting from 0.50, this means that for every increment of f, iv changes slightly (specifically, by 0.0001). This gradual increase creates a smooth transition effect in the isosurface over time, making it look dynamic as the animation progresses.
h = patch(isosurface(d, iv), 'FaceColor', 'blue', 'EdgeColor', 'none');
Isosurface Creation: The isosurface function extracts a 3D surface from the data array d at the specified isovalue iv. The result is a patch object h that represents the isosurface in the 3D plot. The 'FaceColor', 'blue' argument sets the face color of the surface to blue, while 'EdgeColor', 'none' specifies that no edges should be drawn, giving the surface a solid appearance.
isonormals(d, h);
Surface Normals Calculation: This function calculates the normals at each vertex of the isosurface h, based on the data in d. Normals are vectors perpendicular to the surface at each point and are crucial for proper lighting calculations. By using isonormals, the appearance of depth and texture is enhanced, allowing the lighting to interact more realistically with the surface.
patch(isocaps(d, iv), 'FaceColor', 'interp', 'EdgeColor', 'none');
Isocaps Visualization: The isocaps function creates flat surfaces (caps) at the boundaries of the isosurface where the data values meet the isovalue iv. The resulting caps are then rendered as patches with 'FaceColor', 'interp', meaning the colors of the caps are interpolated based on the data values. The caps provide a more complete visual representation of the isosurface, improving its overall appearance.
colormap hsv;
Color Map Setup: This line sets the colormap of the current figure to HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value). The HSV colormap allows for a wide range of colors, which can enhance the visual appeal of the rendering by mapping different values in the data to different colors.
daspect([1, 1, 1]);
Aspect Ratio Setting: The daspect function sets the data aspect ratio of the plot to be equal in all three dimensions. This means that one unit in the x-direction is the same length as one unit in the y-direction and z-direction, ensuring that the visual representation of the 3D data is not distorted.
axis tight;
Tight Axis Setting: This command adjusts the limits of the axes so that they fit tightly around the data, removing any excess white space. It helps to focus the viewer's attention on the isosurface and related visual elements.
view(3);
3D View Configuration: The view(3) command sets the current view to a 3D perspective, allowing the viewer to see the structure of the isosurface from an angle that reveals its three-dimensional nature.
camlight right;
camlight left;
Lighting Effects: These commands add two light sources to the scene, positioned to the right and left of the view. The additional lighting enhances the shading and depth perception of the isosurface, making it appear more three-dimensional and visually appealing.
axis off;
Hide Axes: This command turns off the display of the axes in the plot. Removing the axes provides a cleaner visual representation, allowing the viewer to focus solely on the isosurface and its lighting effects without distraction from the grid lines or axis labels.
lighting phong;
Lighting Model: This line sets the lighting model to Phong. The Phong model is widely used in computer graphics as it provides smooth shading and realistic reflections. It calculates how light interacts with surfaces, enhancing the overall appearance by creating a more natural look.
MATLAB Shorts Mini Hack: The Scrambled Predator's Cube
This code creates a visually dynamic and appealing representation of an isosurface derived from random data. The gradual change in the isovalue allows for smooth transitions, while the combination of lighting, colors, and shading contributes to a rich 3D visualization. Each component plays a vital role in rendering the final output, showcasing advanced techniques in data visualization using MATLAB.
David
David
Last activity on 16 Oct 2024

We are happy to announce the addition of a new code analyzing feature to the AI Chat Playground. This new feature allows you to identify issues with your code making it easier to troubleshoot.
How does it work?
Just click the ANALYZE button in the toolbar of the code editor. Your code is sent to MATLAB running on a server which returns any warnings or errors, each of which are associated to a line of code on the right side of the editor window. Hover over each line marker to view the message.
Give it a try and share your feedback here. We will be adding this new capability to other community areas in the future so your feedback is appreciated.
Thank you,
David
I'd like to share some tips about the 2024 mini hack contest, specifically related to audio:
  1. First (and most important), credit your source: unless you are composing your own audio, I think it's important to give credit to the original sources. It is a little sad to see several contributions with an empty line:
'Cite your audio source here (if applicable):'
  1. A great place to get royalty-free and high-quality music and audio (among other media) is https://pixabay.com. Be sure to check it out! I used one of their audio clips in my submission EKG pulse
  2. The right music can enhance the overall experience of your animation. Sometimes getting the animation to match the music beat can be hard. I suggest you try the other way around: get your music/sound effects to match the animation rhythm with a little editing. A free audio editor with many capabilities (more than enough for this contest, I think) is https://www.audacityteam.org/
  3. Choose a 4-second audio clip with a consistent tempo and seamless loop points, ensuring it complements your animation's mood and loops smoothly over 12 seconds without abrupt changes.
I think that when the right music is paired with the right animation, it can create a more impactful experience.
Well, this is my first time to participate in such community competitions and guess what, I've gone for 4 submissions so far (Feels Great!!)
So I wanna share some tricks that I followed for my first submission named Happy Shaping' ( Go Check it out!!):
1. Dynamic Background Color Change:
  • Technique: The background color of the figure window is gradually changed using sine and cosine functions.
  • Reason: These trigonometric functions (sin and cos) create smooth, oscillating transitions over time, which gives a fluid effect to the background's color shift.
  • Implementation:
Color = [0.1 + 0.5*abs(sin(f/10)), 0.1 + 0.5*abs(cos(f/15)), 0.9 -
0.5*abs(sin(f/20))];
  • Benefit: This introduces a smooth, visually appealing animation effect.
2. Smooth Object Motion Using Sine and Cosine:
  • Technique: The position and shape of objects are based on trigonometric functions.
  • Reason: Using sin(t) and cos(t) ensures that the movement is circular or elliptical, creating continuous and natural motion in animations.
  • Implementation (for object position):
x = 10 * cos(t * 2 * pi) * (1 + 0.5 * sin(t * pi));
y = 10 * sin(t * 2 * pi) * (1 + 0.5 * cos(t * pi));
  • Benefit: Circular and smooth motions are pleasing and easily controlled by tweaking the frequency and phase of sine/cosine functions.
3. Polygon Shape Changing Over Time:
  • Technique: The number of sides of the polygon (sides) changes dynamically based on t.
  • Reason: It creates variation in shape, maintaining user interest as the shape transitions from a triangle to a hexagon.
  • Implementation:
sides = 3 + round(3 * abs(sin(t)));
  • Benefit: This provides dynamic shape transitions over time, keeping the animation non-static.
4. Use of the fill Function for Color-Filled Shapes:
  • Technique: The fill function is used to draw a polygon with smoothly changing colors.
  • Reason: Filling polygons with varying colors based on time (t) allows for continuous color transitions, adding more complexity to the animation.
  • Implementation:
fill(xp, yp, c, 'EdgeColor', 'none');
  • Benefit: Combining both color changes and shape changes enhances the visual impact.
5. Consistent Use of hold on and hold off:
  • Technique: hold on allows multiple graphic objects to be drawn on the same axes without clearing previous objects.
  • Reason: This is crucial for drawing multiple elements (like polygons, circles, and lines) on the same figure.
  • Benefit: It helps manage and layer different graphical elements effectively within the same frame.
6. Use of rectangle for a Smooth Ball Motion:
  • Technique: The ball's motion is defined by rectangle with a Curvature of [1, 1] to make it circular.
  • Reason: Using the rectangle function simplifies the process of drawing a filled circle, and controlling its position and size is intuitive.
  • Benefit: It provides a straightforward way to animate circular objects within the plot.
7. Animating the Connection Line:
  • Technique: A white dashed line (w--) is drawn between the polygon and the moving ball to show a connection between these objects.
  • Reason: This adds interactivity to the scene, as it gives the impression that the polygon and the ball are related or connected in some way.
  • Implementation:
plot([x bx], [y by], 'w--', 'LineWidth', 2);
  • Benefit: A dynamic element that adds depth and narrative to the animation, guiding the viewer’s attention.
8. Frame Synchronization with Time (f and t):
  • Technique: The variable f is used as a frame number, while t = f / 24 creates a link between frame and time.
  • Reason: Ensuring smooth and continuous transitions in the animation over time is critical, so f acts as the control for time-based changes in shape, color, and position.
  • Benefit: This makes it easy to manage frame rates and time-based updates for the animation.
I composed 30 sound loops for use in the Mini Hack.
If you like them, please feel free to use them for free.
Try to install MATLAB2024a on Ubuntu24.04. In the image below, the button indicated by the green arrow is clickable, while the button indicated by the red arrow are unclickable, and input field where text cannot be entered, preventing the installation.
Let's say you have a chance to ask the MATLAB leadership team any question. What would you ask them?
We are thrilled to announce that every community member now has the ability to create a poll in Discussions, allowing you to gather votes and opinions from the community.
How to create a poll:
You can find the ‘Create a Poll’ link just below the text box (see screenshot below). Please note that the default type of content is a ‘Discussion’. To start a poll, simply click the link.
Creating a poll is straightforward. You can add up to 6 choices for your poll and set the duration from 1 to 6 weeks.
Where to find the poll
Polls created by community members will appear only in the channel where they are created and the landing page of Discussions area. Discussions moderators have the privilege to feature/broadcast the poll across Answers, File Exchange, and Cody.
Thoughts?
We can’t wait to see what interesting polls our community will create. Meanwhile, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.
saket singh
saket singh
Last activity on 13 Oct 2024

hello i found the following tools helpful to write matlab programs. copilot.microsoft.com chatgpt.com/gpts gemini.google.com and ai.meta.com. thanks a lot and best wishes.
If you are interested in AI, Autonomous Systems and Robotics, and the future of engineering, don't miss out on MATLAB EXPO 2024 and register now.
You will have the opportunity to connect with engineers, scientists, educators, and researchers, and new ideas.
Featured Sessions:
  • From Embedded to Empowered: The Rise of Software-Defined Products - María Elena Gavilán Alfonso, MathWorks
  • The Empathetic Engineers of Tomorrow - Dr. Darryll Pines, University of Maryland
  • A Model-Based Design Journey from Aerospace to an Artificial Pancreas System - Louis Lintereur, Medtronic Diabetes
Featured Topics:
  • AI
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  • Algorithm Development and Data Analysis
  • Modeling, Simulation, Verification, Validation, and Implementation
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  • Cloud, Software Factories, and DevOps
  • Preparing Future Engineers and Scientists
What is the side-effect of counting the number of Deep Learning Toolbox™ updates in the last 5 years? The industry has slowly stabilised and matured, so updates have slowed down in the last 1 year, and there has been no exponential growth.Is it correct to assume that? Let's see what you think!
releaseNumNames = "R"+string(2019:2024)+["a";"b"];
releaseNumNames = releaseNumNames(:);
numReleaseNotes = [10,14,27,39,38,43,53,52,55,57,46,46];
exampleNums = [nan,nan,nan,nan,nan,nan,40,24,22,31,24,38];
bar(releaseNumNames,[numReleaseNotes;exampleNums]')
legend(["#release notes","#new/update examples"],Location="northwest")
title("Number of Deep Learning Toolbox™ update items in the last 5 years")
ylabel("#release notes")
We are thrilled to announce the redesign of the Discussions leaf page, with a new user-focused right-hand column!
Why Are We Doing This?
  • Address Readers’ Needs:
Previously, the right-hand column displayed related content, but feedback from our community indicated that this wasn't meeting your needs. Many of you expressed a desire to read more posts from the same author but found it challenging to locate them.
With the new design, readers can easily learn more about the author, explore their other posts, and follow them to receive notifications on new content.
  • Enhance Authors’ Experience:
Since the launch of the Discussions area earlier this year, we've seen an influx of community members sharing insightful technical articles, use cases, and ideas. The new design aims to help you grow your followers and organize your content more effectively by editing tags. We highly encourage you to use the Discussions area as your community blogging platform.
We hope you enjoy the new design of the right-hand column. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences by leaving a comment below.
We are excited to invite you to join our 2024 community contest – MATLAB Shorts Mini Hack! Last year, we challenged you to create a 48-frame animation. In 2024, we are increasing the frame count to 96 and supporting audio. Your mission? Create a short movie!
Whether you are a seasoned MATLAB user or just a beginner, you can participate in the contest and have opportunities to win amazing prizes. Be sure to check out our Blog post for more details on the Community Contests.
Timeframe
This contest runs for 5 weeks, from Oct. 7th to Nov. 10th.
How to Participate
  • Create a new short movie or remix an existing one with up to 2,000 characters of code.
  • Vote or comment on the short movies you love!
Prizes
You will have opportunities to win compelling prizes, including Amazon gift cards, MathWorks T-shirts, and virtual badges. We will give out both weekly prizes and grand prizes.
Stay Informed
Make sure to follow the contest to get important announcements and your prize updates.
Join for creativity and fun! We look forward to seeing your creations in the MATLAB Shorts Contest!
The AI Chat Playground at MATLAB Central has two new upgrades: OpenAI GPT-4o mini and MATLAB R2024b!
GPT-4o mini is a new language model from OpenAI and brings general knowledge up to October 2023. GPT-4o mini surpasses GPT-3.5 Turbo and other small models on academic benchmarks across both textual intelligence and reasoning. Our goal is to keep improving the output of the AI Chat Playground. This upgrade is available now: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/playground/
One more thing... we also updated the system to the latest release of MATLAB. This is R2024b and comes with hundreds of updates and new plot types to explore.Check out Mike Croucher's blog post about the latest version of MATLAB: https://blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2024/09/13/the-latest-version-of-matlab-r2024b-has-just-been-released/
We are looking forward to your feedback on the updates to the AI Chat Playground. Let us know what you think and how you use this community app.
Always!
29%
It depends
14%
Never!
21%
I didn't know that was possible
36%
1810 votes
Hello everyone,
Over the past few weeks, our community members have shared some incredible insights and resources. Here are some highlights worth checking out:

Interesting Questions

Johnathan is seeking help with implementing a complex equation into MATLAB's curve fitting toolbox. If you have experience with curve fitting or MATLAB, your input could be invaluable!

Popular Discussions

Athanasios continues his exploration of the Duffing Equation, delving into its chaotic behavior. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in nonlinear dynamics or chaos theory.
John shares his playful exploration with MATLAB to find a generative equation for a sequence involving Fibonacci numbers. It's an intriguing challenge for those who love mathematical puzzles.

From File Exchange

Ayesha provides a graphical analysis of linearised models in epidemiology, offering a detailed look at the dynamics of these systems. This resource is perfect for those interested in mathematical modeling.
Gareth brings some humor to MATLAB with a toolbox designed to share jokes. It's a fun way to lighten the mood during conferences or meetups.

From the Blogs

Ned Gulley interviews Tim Marston, the 2023 MATLAB Mini Hack contest winner. Tim's creativity and skills are truly inspiring, and his story is a must-read for aspiring programmers.
Sivylla discusses the integration of AI with embedded systems, highlighting the benefits of using MATLAB and Simulink. It's an insightful read for anyone interested in the future of AI technology.
Thank you to all our contributors for sharing your knowledge and creativity. We encourage everyone to engage with these posts and continue fostering a vibrant and supportive community.
Happy exploring!
David
David
Last activity on 16 Sep 2024

Explore the newest online training courses, available as of 2024b: one new Onramp, eight new short courses, and one new learning path. Yes, that’s 10 new offerings. We’ve been busy.
As a reminder, Onramps are free to all. Short courses and learning paths require a subscription to the Online Training Suite (OTS).
  1. Multibody Simulation Onramp
  2. Analyzing Results in Simulink
  3. Battery Pack Modeling
  4. Introduction to Motor Control
  5. Signal Processing Techniques for Streaming Signals
  6. Core Signal Processing Techniques in MATLAB (learning path – includes the four short courses listed below)
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