May 1, 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VISUAL NUMERICS ANNOUNCES VERSION 5.0 OF ITS IMSL C NUMERICAL LIBRARY (CNL)

New release features 77 new functions, including 50 specifically designed for the financial services industry

BOULDER, Colo. -- Visual Numerics, Inc., a developer of web-enabled data visualization, numerical analysis, and enterprise software solutions, today announced that Version 5.0 of its IMSL C Numerical Library (CNL) will be available in May.

The primary enhancement in Version 5.0 is the addition of 77 new numerical analysis functions, including 50 that were specifically designed for the finance and insurance industries. In addition, CNL 5.0 adds support for several new 64-bit computing platforms. Previously, the software supported only Compaq Computer Corp. and Silicon Graphics Inc. 64-bit computers.

The 50 new finance functions are intended to help brokerage firms or insurance companies, for example, perform financial modeling to analyze various risk factors associated with their business. Included are routines for calculating depreciation of assets, internal rates of return, bond amortization, and net present values.

Version 5.0 also features new statisical analysis functionality, including enhanced random number generators and a Kalman filter. A Kalman filter is useful in a variety of applications including navigation, surveying, vehicle tracking, geology, oceanography, fluid dynamics, and demographic estimation.

"Version 5.0 represents the most comprehensive release to date of CNL -- one that we believe offers something for everyone," said Michael Pulverenti, Visual Numerics' IMSL product manager. "Whether a developer wants increased performance through 64-bit support or greater functionality through the 77 new routines, CNL 5.0 can ease their programming workload."

Continually updated since its first release in 1990, CNL is a collection of more than 300 mathematical and statistical analysis functions written in C that programmers can embed directly into their numerical analysis applications. The Library's platform-optimized functions are among the most accurate and reliable on the market. Many of CNL's functions are based upon corresponding routines from the company's highly-regarded IMSL Fortran Numerical Library, which was first released in 1970. Since that time, programmers in industries ranging from engineering test & analysis to space physics to business & finance and the earth sciences have used the IMSL tools to build their applications.

The benefits of using the IMSL C Numerical Library are many, foremost among them is an acceleration of application development and the corresponding savings in time and money. According to Visual Numerics' benchmark studies, an average IMSL C Numerical function contains about 500 lines of code. Given that a programmer averages 10 lines of code per day, including designing, debugging, documenting and testing, just one algorithm developed from scratch would take more than two months to complete.

Availability & Price
The IMSL C Numerical Library supports Unix-based workstations (Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Silicon Graphics, and Compaq) and personal computers running Windows 98/NT/2000 or Linux.
Pricing starts at $1,295*, depending on platform and number of concurrent users.

About Visual Numerics, Inc.
Privately held Visual Numerics develops software products that help users understand complex data, which is typically in the form of rows and columns of numbers. The company provides its data visualization and numerical analysis software tools to major corporations, academic institutions, and research laboratories worldwide. Typical users include scientists, researchers, engineers, and financial analysts at organizations such as Bear, Stearns & Company; Sandia National Laboratories; American Association of Railroads; Boeing Company; and Coleman Research Corp.

Visual Numerics' products include the IMSL Libraries for mathematical and statistical analysis; the PV-WAVE Development Environment for desktop visual data analysis applications; the PV-WAVE Web Development Environment for network-based visual data analysis applications; and PV-WAVE Applications and Toolkits for time-series data analysis, image processing, and signal processing.

click here for a complete list of new routines in CNL5.0