Approximate and Incomplete Factorizations

In this chapter, we give a brief overview of a particular class of preconditioners known as incomplete factorizations. They can be thought of as approximating the exact LU factorization of a given matrix A (e.g. computed via Gaussian elimination) by disallowing certain ll-ins. As opposed to other PDE-based preconditioners such as multigrid and domain decomposition, this class of preconditioners are primarily algebraic in nature and can in principle be applied to any sparse matrices. When applied to PDE problems, they are usually not optimal in the sense that the condition number of the preconditioned system will grow as the mesh size h is reduced, although usually at a slower rate than for the unpreconditioned system. On the other hand, they are often quite robust with respect to other more algebraic features of the problem such as rough and anisotropic coecients and strong convection terms. We will describe the basic ILU and (modied) MILU preconditioners. Then we will review brie y several variants: more lls, relaxed ILU, shifted ILU, ILQ, as well as block and multilevel variants. We will also touch on a related class of approximate factorization methods which arise more directly from approximating a partial dierential operator by a product of simpler operators. Finally, we will discuss parallelization aspects, including re-ordering, series expansion and domain decomposition techniques. Generally, this class of preconditioner does not possess a high degree of parallelism in its original form. Re-ordering and approximations by truncating certain series expansion will increase the parallelism, but usually with a deterioration in convergence rate. Domain decomposition oers a compromise

A hybrid recursive multilevel incomplete factorization preconditioner for solving general linear systems

In this paper we introduce an algebraic recursive multilevel incomplete factorization preconditioner, based on a distributed Schur complement formulation, for solving general linear systems. The novelty of the proposed method is to combine factorization techniques of both implicit and explicit type, recursive combinatorial algorithms, multilevel mechanisms and overlapping strategies to maximize sparsity in the inverse factors and consequently reduce the factorization costs. Numerical experiments demonstrate the good potential of the proposed solver to precondition effectively general linear systems, also against other state-of-the-art iterative solvers of both implicit and explicit form

Preconditioning for Sparse Linear Systems at the Dawn of the 21st Century: History, Current Developments, and Future Perspectives

Iterative methods are currently the solvers of choice for large sparse linear systems of equations. However, it is well known that the key factor for accelerating, or even allowing for, convergence is the preconditioner. The research on preconditioning techniques has characterized the last two decades. Nowadays, there are a number of different options to be considered when choosing the most appropriate preconditioner for the specific problem at hand. The present work provides an overview of the most popular algorithms available today, emphasizing the respective merits and limitations. The overview is restricted to algebraic preconditioners, that is, general-purpose algorithms requiring the knowledge of the system matrix only, independently of the specific problem it arises from. Along with the traditional distinction between incomplete factorizations and approximate inverses, the most recent developments are considered, including the scalable multigrid and parallel approaches which represent the current frontier of research. A separate section devoted to saddle-point problems, which arise in many different applications, closes the paper