MATLAB© (short for "Matrix Laboratory") was originally created in the 1970s by Cleve Moler at the University of New Mexico.

MATLAB is a so-called "4th generation programming language", that is, a programming language designed with a *specific* purpose in mind. This is in contrast to 3rd generation programming languages (FORTRAN/C/C++) which are general purpose in nature.

Although MATLAB itself provides a great deal of basic matrix manipulation, plotting, and general purpose scientific programming capability, a large part of its functionality is actually available through specialized "toolboxes" such as the Optimization Toolbox, the Statistics Toolbox, the Signal Processing Toolbox, the Bioinformatics Toolbox, the Image Processing Toolbox, etc.

MATLAB can be run on computers from typical laptops up to the most powerful High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. HPC systems such as Stampede2 and Frontera at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) allow you to run MATLAB on many processors and with large amounts of memory. MATLAB at TACC provides some details about using MATLAB on Stampede2 or Frontera.