SPM8 incorporates a new batch machinery, matlabbatch, that has been derived from the
SPM5 batch system. The main new feature is the handling of dependencies: if you have
several jobs that you want to execute, where the input to one job depends on the output of
another, you can specify that dependency explicitly in the interface. It becomes then
straightforward to apply the same operations on several dataset (for example, re-using the
same batch for multiple subjects analyses).
This batch system is compatible with the previous, SPM5, job structure.

Matlabbatch: http://sourceforge.net/projects/matlabbatch
 
These descriptions of the new features are taken from the SPM8 Release Notes
 
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