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U.S. Department of Energy
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PSolve: A concurrent algorithm for solving sparse systems of linear equations

Conference ·
OSTI ID:5768428

PSolve solves a sparse system of linear equations on a shared-memory parallel processor. Each autonomous process reduces a pair of matrix rows, uses pairwise pivoting for numerical stability, and synchronizes with only a few others at a time. For most test matrices, on the Alliant FX/8 multiprocessor, PSolve is faster than Gaussian Elimination (does not exploit sparsity) and the Yale Sparse Matrix Package (does not exploit parallelism). Although Gaussian Elimination runs in vector mode, PSolve cannot use currently available vector hardware because of its compact matrix storage scheme. However, with a new ''sparse-align'' vector unit, PSolve is vectorizable and runs faster than any other algorithm for all the selected test matrices. 11 refs., 10 figs.

Research Organization:
Illinois Univ., Urbana (USA). Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
DOE Contract Number:
FG02-85ER25001
OSTI ID:
5768428
Report Number(s):
DOE/ER/25001-73; CONF-870831-11; ON: DE88003584
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English