MATLAB: Are the Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.1 (R2008b) functions slow on the machine

Symbolic Math Toolbox

I have a machine with 1 GB of RAM, and I am using the functions in Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.1 (R2008b). They are taking a long time to execute, especially the first time.
Reproduction Steps:
tic; syms t;
   int(cos(t),t,0,pi/2);
   int(cos(t)*sin(t),t,0,pi/2);
toc
This takes almost 2 minutes on Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.1 (R2008b) but only a second in Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.0 (R2008a).

Best Answer

This enhancement has been incorporated in Release 2009b (R2009b). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:
This is a limitation in Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.1 (R2008b). The likely cause for this behavior is that the MuPAD engine and MATLAB are swapping in the virtual memory space as enough Physical memory is not available while MuPAD starts up.
As a workaround, one can start MATLAB with the '-nojvm' causing it to use much less memory and hence get some performance improvement. Note that If you start MATLAB with matlab '-nojvm' (which disables Java) in MATLAB 7.7 (R2008b) you will receive a warning when you attempt to create or load figures, open GUIs, print, or capture figures using getframe. For more information on running MATLAB with '-nojvm', refer the following documentation:
 <http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/matlabunix.html>
Increasing the RAM available to the machine, so that more Physical memory is available for MATLAB will also alleviate this issue.
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