Structured preconditioners for nonsingular matrices of block two-by-two structures

We present a class of new preconditioners based on the incomplete Givens orthogonalization (IGO) methods for solving large sparse systems of linear equations. In the new methods, instead of dropping entries and accepting fill-ins according to the magnitudes of values and the sparsity patterns, we adopt a diagonal compensation strategy, in which the dropped entries are re-used by adding to the main diagonal entries of the same rows of the incomplete upper-triangular factors, possibly after suitable relaxation treatments, so that certain constraints on the preconditioning matrices are further satisfied. This strategy can make the computed preconditioning matrices possess certain desired properties, e.g., having the same weighted row sums as the target matrices. Theoretical analysis shows that these modified incomplete Givens orthogonalization (MIGO) methods can preserve certain useful properties of the original matrix, and numerical results are used to verify the stability, the accuracy, and the efficiency of the MIGO methods employed to precondition the Krylov subspace iteration methods such as GMRES. Both theoretical and numerical studies show that the MIGO methods may have the potential to present high-quality preconditioners for large sparse nonsymmetric matrices.

To analyze the behavior of semiconductor devices numerically, we need to solve extremely large and sparse linear systems of equations as fast as possible. In this paper, parallel processing architectures using systolic arrays are proposed as a rapid solver of linear equations. The architectures are designed to reduce the number of processing elements, utilizing the regularity and the sparseness of coefficient matrices.The proposed systolic arrays consist of sixty‐four cells for incomplete matrix decomposition and of seven cells for matrix‐vector multiplication. This number is independent from the number N of grid points discretized for a three‐dimensional device. The processing time of the array to solve a system of equations is proportional to N. Furthermore, the architectures are revised for faster parallel computation. The acceleration is based on the fact that a coefficient matrix is decomposed of smaller matrices. By the acceleration for matrix‐vector multiplication, required cells are 8 × N1/3, but the processing time is proportional to N2/3.

This paper presents a novel hardware solution for solving sparse matrices using emulation technology. The proposed solution introduces a bio-inspired technique, which is Genetic Algorithm (GA) to solve the sparse system of linear equations (SLEs). The proposed solution can be used with any physical system that can be modeled as SLEs. Computations involved in Finite Element Method (FEM) consume too much time, which affects the final time-to-market value. Profiling shows that the most time-consuming part in the simulation process is the solver part which is responsible for solving the resultant SLEs generated from the FEM. The total number of equations may reach thousands or millions of linear equations. Hardware implementation of GA and making a good use of parallelism in implementing the architecture accelerate the time taken by the solver part. Solving the system by classical numerical methods, such as conjugate gradient (CG) implemented in software is performed sequentially, here the architecture allows the parallelism in performing GA operators, such as selection, crossover, and mutation. The parallelism in the proposed architecture is the superiority point which we rely on. The results show that our proposed method to solve the SLEs outperforms the classical CG software implementation on run time and number of equations.

In this paper, a class of parallel blockwise matrix multisplitting block relaxation methods, including the blockwise matrix multisplitting block symmetric accelerated overrelaxation method, the blockwise matrix multisplitting block unsymmetric and symmetric successive overrelaxation methods and the blockwise matrix multisplitting block unsymmetric and symmetric Gauss-Seidel methods, etc., is established for the large sparse block system of linear equations, and its convergence theory is set up thorouthly when the coefficient matrix is a block H-matrix. Also, the new methods are further extended by relaxing different block elements of the iterations with different relaxation parameters and, therefore, general frameworks of parallel blockwise matrix multisplitting block relaxation methods for solving the block system of linear equations are naturally obtained.

This paper investigates the performance of a class of methods based on the Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (PCG) method for the solution of large and sparse systems of linear equations which arise from the p‐version of the adaptive finite element method. The hierarchical type of preconditioning used in the past is extended to the SSOR and incomplete factorization type preconditioning and applied with a global handling of the stiffness matrix. The paper also presents some new ideas on Domain Decomposition (DD) matrix‐handling techniques, whereby the explicit formulation of the resulting Schur complement is avoided by utilizing the PCG method with efficient preconditioners and by processing separately on the coarse and the fine mesh. The suitability of the methods to the p‐version of the adaptive finite element method is demonstrated through extensive numerical tests in two dimensions.

Supernode pivoting for unsymmetric matrices coupled with supernode partitioning and asynchronous computation can achieve high gigaflop rates for parallel sparse LU factorization on shared memory parallel computers. The progress in weighted graph matching algorithms helps to extend these concepts further and prepermutation of rows is used to place large matrix entries on the diagonal. Supernode pivoting allows dynamical interchanges of columns and rows during the factorization process. The BLAS-3 level efficiency is retained. An enhanced left-right looking scheduling scheme is uneffected and results in good speedup on SMP machines without increasing the operation count. These algorithms have been integrated into the recent unsymmetric version of the PARDISO solver. Experiments demonstrate that a wide set of unsymmetric linear systems can be solved and high performance is consistently achieved for large sparse unsymmetric matrices from real world applications.

Let Ax = b be a large and sparse system of linear equations where A is a nonsingular matrix. An approximate solution is frequently obtained by applying preconditioned iterations. Consider the matrix B = A + PQT where P,Qźźn×k$P, Q \in \mathbb {R}^{n \times k}$ are full rank matrices. In this work, we study the problem of updating a previously computed preconditioner for A in order to solve the updated linear system Bx = b by preconditioned iterations. In particular, we propose a method for updating a Balanced Incomplete Factorization preconditioner. The strategy is based on the computation of an approximate Inverse Sherman-Morrison decomposition for an equivalent augmented linear system. Approximation properties of the preconditioned matrix and an analysis of the computational cost of the algorithm are studied. Moreover, the results of the numerical experiments with different types of problems show that the proposed method contributes to accelerate the convergence.

Computer subroutines for solving large sparse systems of linear equations usually involve fairly complicated data structures and storage management. In most cases, the user of such subroutines simply wants top solve his problem and does not have to understand how the storage management is done, or how the matrix components are stored. Thus software for solving sparse systems of linear equations should be designed in such a way that it can insulate the user from these considerations, while still allowing the software to be used in a variety of ways.

During the past few years, algorithmic improvements alone have reduced the time required for the direct solution of unsymmetric sparse systems of linear equations by almost an order of magnitude. This paper compares the performance of some well-known software packages for solving general sparse systems. In particular, it demonstrates the consistently high level of performance achieved by WSMP---the most recent of such solvers. It compares the various algorithmic components of these solvers and discusses their impact on solver performance. Our experiments show that the algorithmic choices made in WSMP enable it to run more than twice as fast as the best among similar solvers and that WSMP can factor some of the largest sparse matrices available from real applications in only a few seconds on a 4-CPU workstation. Thus, the combination of advances in hardware and algorithms makes it possible to solve those general sparse linear systems quickly and easily that might have been considered too large until recently.

We propose a two-level nested preconditioned iterative scheme for solving sparse linear systems of equations in which the coefficient matrix is symmetric and indefinite with a relatively small numb...

A projection method for solving nonsymmetric linear systems on multiprocessors

Solving a large sparse system of linear equations (SSLE)over the binary field is an important step in the general number field seive (GNFS) algorithm that is often used to factorize large integers used in the RSA algorithm. Block Lanczos method proposed by Montgomery is an efficient and reliable method for solving such systems. A number of implementations of Block Lanczos method on distributed systems have been proposed in past. This paper discusses the parallel Montgomery’s Block Lanczos method for solving binary system of equations on shared multiprocessors(SMP). A simple experiment shows that the speed of convergence of this algorithm is dependent on a wise choice of initial guess for kick-starting the algorithm. A somewhat dense choice of the initial guess is suggested rather than a random choice for faster convergence. Devoid of any communication overheads of a loosely coupled system, the improved method gives good performance on SMP systems which can provide an able alternative to the more popular distributed systems. Details of implementation of this algorithm on SMP and experimental results are also provided in the paper.

Introduction. Kron [1] has developed a technique for tearing large, sparse linear systems of algebraic equations into smaller systems, then putting the solutions of these smaller systems together to form the solution of the original problem. This can result in a great savings over solving the whole system in one piece. The trick is to find where to tear so that on the one hand the remaining pieces are small and easily solvable, but on the other hand not so much violence is done to the equations so that the task of putting their solutions back together becomes too difncult. Kron's pro? cedure for solving the pieces and putting their solutions together is based upon representing systems of equations as electric networks. He makes his choice of where to tear from his insight into these networks and the physical processes the equations represent. In the hands of someone such as Kron who has an understanding of the methods and good insight into the prob? lem, this technique has had outstanding success. The widespread use of Kron's technique has perhaps been limited severely for lack of practitioners skilled in this art of determining effective ways of tearing specific problems. Many problems are too large to submit to such insight. It is the purpose of this paper to contribute to the development of procedures which can be performed on a computer for analyzing the structures of the systems of equations themselves as an aid in choosing how to break them up for easier solution. The methods developed here require only that we consider what variables occur in each equation, but not how they appear. Thus, the tech? niques are not limited to linear systems.

Based on investigating the eigenvalue distribution of the preconditioned matrices that arise in the finite-element discretization of indefinite elliptic problems with preconditioning matrices, constructed on the basis of the principal coercive part of the considered elliptic problems, it is proved that the Krylov subspace CG-type methods like MINRES converge with a rate of convergence determined only by the stability properties of the discrete problem in terms of a priori estimates and the accuracy of the preconditioning matrix with respect to the principal coercive part of the considered finite-element stiffness matrix. This is also demonstrated by numerical experiments. The method is of practical interest if there are only a few negative eigenvalues.

Element-by-element iterative solution methods have been shown to be effective for solving large, sparse linear systems of equations with a positive definite stiffness matrix. In this paper the iterative method GMRES will be described. This solution method is also suited for solving nonsymmetric systems of equations. As acceleration technique an element-by-element preconditioner has been employed. Attention is focused mainly on the convergence behaviour of the method. The calculations described in this paper have been performed with the finite element package DIANA.