A frontal solver for the 21st century

✍ Scribed by Scott, Jennifer A.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 129 KB
• Volume: 22
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1069-8299
• DOI: 10.1002/cnm.870

✦ Synopsis

In recent years there have been a number of important developments in frontal algorithms for solving the large sparse linear systems of equations that arise from ÿnite-element problems. We report on the design of a new fully portable and e cient frontal solver for large-scale real and complex unsymmetric linear systems from ÿnite-element problems that incorporates these developments. The new package o ers both a exible reverse communication interface and a simple to use all-in-one interface, which is designed to make the package more accessible to new users. Other key features include automatic element ordering using a state-of-the-art hybrid multilevel spectral algorithm, minimal main memory requirements, the use of high-level BLAS, and facilities to allow the solver to be used as part of a parallel multiple front solver. The performance of the new solver, which is written in Fortran 95, is illustrated using a range of problems from practical applications. The solver is available as package HSL MA42 ELEMENT within the HSL mathematical software library and, for element problems, supersedes the well-known MA42 package.