So I just purchased a person copy of Matlab. I start to run my hyperspectral toolbox upon it only to be greeted with Matlab segfaulting. I traced back the error to the inv() and eig() functions. For a little test, I constructed a one line program that invokes the crash: clear; inv(eye(2));
Now, I begin to dig and dig to find the reason for the problem. I search Mathwork’s website, I file a bug report, and I search Google. I finally find an answer to my question here. To make a long story short, Matlab R2009a does not support processors that don’t support SSE2 instructions. This is ridiculous! It’s one thing to support backwards compatibility for software, but not for x86 compliant hardware?
I just bought a netbook which runs an Intel Atom and supports the SSE2 instructions set. I attempted to install Matlab on that machine, since it was my server that Matlab won’t current run on, only to run into licensing issues since the licence is tied to a hardware ID. This story is still unfolding — another story for another time.