Scalability Analysis of Parallel GMRES Implementations

Applications involving large sparse nonsymmetric linear systems encourage parallel implementations of robust iterative solution methods, such as GMRES(k). Two parallel versions of GMRES(k) based on different data distributions and using Householder reflections in the orthogonalization phase, and variations of these which adapt the restart value k, are analyzed with respect to scalability (their ability to maintain fixed efficiency with an increase in problem size and number of processors).A theoretical algorithm-machine model for scalability is derived and validated by experiments on three parallel computers, each with different machine characteristics

Least squares residuals and minimal residual methods

We study Krylov subspace methods for solving unsymmetric linear algebraic systems that minimize the norm of the residual at each step (minimal residual (MR) methods). MR methods are often formulated in terms of a sequence of least squares (LS) problems of increasing dimension. We present several basic identities and bounds for the LS residual. These results are interesting in the general context of solving LS problems. When applied to MR methods, they show that the size of the MR residual is strongly related to the conditioning of different bases of the same Krylov subspace. Using different bases is useful in theory because relating convergence to the characteristics of different bases offers new insight into the behavior of MR methods. Different bases also lead to different implementations which are mathematically equivalent but can differ numerically. Our theoretical results are used for a finite precision analysis of implementations of the GMRES method [Y. Saad and M. H. Schultz, SIAM J. Sci. Statist. Comput., 7 (1986), pp. 856--869]. We explain that the choice of the basis is fundamental for the numerical stability of the implementation. As demonstrated in the case of Simpler GMRES [H. F. Walker and L. Zhou, Numer. Linear Algebra Appl., 1 (1994), pp. 571--581], the best orthogonalization technique used for computing the basis does not compensate for the loss of accuracy due to an inappropriate choice of the basis. In particular, we prove that Simpler GMRES is inherently less numerically stable than the Classical GMRES implementation due to Saad and Schultz [SIAM J. Sci. Statist. Comput., 7 (1986), pp. 856--869]

Stable Sparse Orthogonal Factorization of Ill-Conditioned Banded Matrices for Parallel Computing

Sequential and parallel algorithms based on the LU factorization or the QR factorization have been intensely studied and widely used in the problems of computation with large-scale ill-conditioned banded matrices. Great concerns on existing methods include ill-conditioning, sparsity of factor matrices, computational complexity, and scalability. In this dissertation, we study a sparse orthogonal factorization of a banded matrix motivated by parallel computing. Specifically, we develop a process to factorize a banded matrix as a product of a sparse orthogonal matrix and a sparse matrix which can be transformed to an upper triangular matrix by column permutations. We prove that the proposed process requires low complexity, and it is numerically stable, maintaining similar stability results as the modified Gram-Schmidt process. On this basis, we develop a parallel algorithm for the factorization in a distributed computing environment. Through an analysis of its performance, we show that the communication costs reach the theoretical least upper bounds, while its parallel complexity or speedup approaches the optimal bound. For an ill-conditioned banded system, we construct a sequential solver that breaks it down into small-scale underdetermined systems, which are solved by the proposed factorization with high accuracy. We also implement a parallel solver with strategies to treat the memory issue appearing in extra large-scale linear systems of size over one billion. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical results derived in this thesis, and demonstrate the superior accuracy and scalability of the proposed solvers for ill-conditioned linear systems, comparing to the most commonly used direct solvers

Alternatives for parallel Krylov subspace basis computation

Numerical methods related to Krylov subspaces are widely used in large sparse numerical linear algebra. Vectors in these subspaces are manipulated via their representation onto orthonormal bases. Nowadays, on serial computers, the method of Arnoldi is considered as a reliable technique for constructing such bases. However, although easily parallelizable, this technique is not as scalable as expected for communications. In this work we examine alternative methods aimed at overcoming this drawback. Since they retrieve upon completion the same information as Arnoldi's algorithm does, they enable us to design a wide family of stable and scalable Krylov approximation methods for various parallel environments. We present timing results obtained from their implementation on two distributed-memory multiprocessor supercomputers: the Intel Paragon and the IBM Scalable POWERparallel SP2. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd