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Section: New Results

Sparse Linear solvers

Parallel GMRES

Participant : Jocelyne Erhel.

Sparse linear systems Ax=b arise very often in computational science and engineering. Krylov methods are very efficient iterative methods, and restarted GMRES is a reference algorithm for non-symmetric systems. A first issue is to ensure a fast convergence, by preconditioning the system with a matrix M. Preconditioning must reduce the number of iterations, and be easy to solve. A second issue is to achieve high performance computing. The most time-consuming part in GMRES is to build an orthonormal basis V. With the Arnoldi process, many scalar products involve global communications. In order to avoid them, s-step methods have been designed to find a tradeoff between parallel performance and stability. Also, solving a system with the matrix M and for multiplying a vector by the matrix A should be efficient. A domain decomposition approach involves mainly local communications and is frequently used. A coarse grid correction, based on deflation for example, improves convergence. These techniques can be combined to provide fast convergence and fast parallel algorithms. Numerical results illustrate various issues and achievements.

This work was presented at an international conference (invited talk) [31].