A study on block flexible iterative solvers with applications to Earth imaging problem in geophysics

Les travaux de ce doctorat concernent le développement de méthodes itératives pour la résolution de systèmes linéaires creux de grande taille comportant de nombreux seconds membres. L’application visée est la résolution d’un problème inverse en géophysique visant à reconstruire la vitesse de propagation des ondes dans le sous-sol terrestre. Lorsque de nombreuses sources émettrices sont utilisées, ce problème inverse nécessite la résolution de systèmes linéaires complexes non symétriques non hermitiens comportant des milliers de seconds membres. Dans le cas tridimensionnel ces systèmes linéaires sont reconnus comme difficiles à résoudre plus particulièrement lorsque des fréquences élevées sont considérées. Le principal objectif de cette thèse est donc d’étendre les développements existants concernant les méthodes de Krylov par bloc. Nous étudions plus particulièrement les techniques de déflation dans le cas multiples seconds membres et recyclage de sous-espace dans le cas simple second membre. Des gains substantiels sont obtenus en terme de temps de calcul par rapport aux méthodes existantes sur des applications réalistes dans un environnement parallèle distribué. ABSTRACT : This PhD thesis concerns the development of flexible Krylov subspace iterative solvers for the solution of large sparse linear systems of equations with multiple right-hand sides. Our target application is the solution of the acoustic full waveform inversion problem in geophysics associated with the phenomena of wave propagation through an heterogeneous model simulating the subsurface of Earth. When multiple wave sources are being used, this problem gives raise to large sparse complex non-Hermitian and nonsymmetric linear systems with thousands of right-hand sides. Specially in the three-dimensional case and at high frequencies, this problem is known to be difficult. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a flexible block Krylov iterative method which extends and improves techniques already available in the current literature to the multiple right-hand sides scenario. We exploit the relations between each right-hand side to accelerate the convergence of the overall iterative method. We study both block deflation and single right-hand side subspace recycling techniques obtaining substantial gains in terms of computational time when compared to other strategies published in the literature, on realistic applications performed in a parallel environment

Novel Monte Carlo Methods for Large-Scale Linear Algebra Operations

Linear algebra operations play an important role in scientific computing and data analysis. With increasing data volume and complexity in the Big Data era, linear algebra operations are important tools to process massive datasets. On one hand, the advent of modern high-performance computing architectures with increasing computing power has greatly enhanced our capability to deal with a large volume of data. One the other hand, many classical, deterministic numerical linear algebra algorithms have difficulty to scale to handle large data sets. Monte Carlo methods, which are based on statistical sampling, exhibit many attractive properties in dealing with large volume of datasets, including fast approximated results, memory efficiency, reduced data accesses, natural parallelism, and inherent fault tolerance. In this dissertation, we present new Monte Carlo methods to accommodate a set of fundamental and ubiquitous large-scale linear algebra operations, including solving large-scale linear systems, constructing low-rank matrix approximation, and approximating the extreme eigenvalues/ eigenvectors, across modern distributed and parallel computing architectures. First of all, we revisit the classical Ulam-von Neumann Monte Carlo algorithm and derive the necessary and sufficient condition for its convergence. To support a broad family of linear systems, we develop Krylov subspace Monte Carlo solvers that go beyond the use of Neumann series. New algorithms used in the Krylov subspace Monte Carlo solvers include (1) a Breakdown-Free Block Conjugate Gradient algorithm to address the potential rank deficiency problem occurred in block Krylov subspace methods; (2) a Block Conjugate Gradient for Least Squares algorithm to stably approximate the least squares solutions of general linear systems; (3) a BCGLS algorithm with deflation to gain convergence acceleration; and (4) a Monte Carlo Generalized Minimal Residual algorithm based on sampling matrix-vector products to provide fast approximation of solutions. Secondly, we design a rank-revealing randomized Singular Value Decomposition (R3SVD) algorithm for adaptively constructing low-rank matrix approximations to satisfy application-specific accuracy. Thirdly, we study the block power method on Markov Chain Monte Carlo transition matrices and find that the convergence is actually depending on the number of independent vectors in the block. Correspondingly, we develop a sliding window power method to find stationary distribution, which has demonstrated success in modeling stochastic luminal Calcium release site. Fourthly, we take advantage of hybrid CPU-GPU computing platforms to accelerate the performance of the Breakdown-Free Block Conjugate Gradient algorithm and the randomized Singular Value Decomposition algorithm. Finally, we design a Gaussian variant of Freivalds’ algorithm to efficiently verify the correctness of matrix-matrix multiplication while avoiding undetectable fault patterns encountered in deterministic algorithms

Status and Future Perspectives for Lattice Gauge Theory Calculations to the Exascale and Beyond

In this and a set of companion whitepapers, the USQCD Collaboration lays out a program of science and computing for lattice gauge theory. These whitepapers describe how calculation using lattice QCD (and other gauge theories) can aid the interpretation of ongoing and upcoming experiments in particle and nuclear physics, as well as inspire new ones.Comment: 44 pages. 1 of USQCD whitepapers

Block Iterative Methods and Recycling for Improved Scalability of Linear Solvers

International audienceContemporary large-scale Partial Differential Equation (PDE) simulations usually require the solution of large and sparse linear systems. Moreover, it is often needed to solve these linear systems with different or multiple Right-Hand Sides (RHSs). In this paper, various strategies will be presented to extend the scalability of existing linear solvers using appropriate recycling strategies or block methods—i.e., by treating multiple right-hand sides simultaneously. The scalability of this work is assessed by performing simulations on up to 8,192 cores for solving linear systems arising from various physical phenomena modeled by Poisson's equation, the system of linear elasticity, or Maxwell's equation. This work is shipped as part of on open-source software, readily available and usable in any C, C++, or Python code. In particular, some simulations are performed on top of a well-established library, PETSc, and it is shown how our approaches can be used to decrease time to solution down by 30%

Block Iterative Methods and Recycling for Improved Scalability of Linear Solvers

International audienceContemporary large-scale Partial Differential Equation (PDE) simulations usually require the solution of large and sparse linear systems. Moreover, it is often needed to solve these linear systems with different or multiple Right-Hand Sides (RHSs). In this paper, various strategies will be presented to extend the scalability of existing linear solvers using appropriate recycling strategies or block methods—i.e., by treating multiple right-hand sides simultaneously. The scalability of this work is assessed by performing simulations on up to 8,192 cores for solving linear systems arising from various physical phenomena modeled by Poisson's equation, the system of linear elasticity, or Maxwell's equation. This work is shipped as part of on open-source software, readily available and usable in any C, C++, or Python code. In particular, some simulations are performed on top of a well-established library, PETSc, and it is shown how our approaches can be used to decrease time to solution down by 30%

Contribution to the study of efficient iterative methods for the numerical solution of partial differential equations

Multigrid and domain decomposition methods provide efficient algorithms for the numerical solution of partial differential equations arising in the modelling of many applications in Computational Science and Engineering. This manuscript covers certain aspects of modern iterative solution methods for the solution of large-scale problems issued from the discretization of partial differential equations. More specifically, we focus on geometric multigrid methods, non-overlapping substructuring methods and flexible Krylov subspace methods with a particular emphasis on their combination. Firstly, the combination of multigrid and Krylov subspace methods is investigated on a linear partial differential equation modelling wave propagation in heterogeneous media. Secondly, we focus on non-overlapping domain decomposition methods for a specific finite element discretization known as the hp finite element, where unrefinement/refinement is allowed both by decreasing/increasing the step size h or by decreasing/increasing the polynomial degree p of the approximation on each element. Results on condition number bounds for the domain decomposition preconditioned operators are given and illustrated by numerical results on academic problems in two and three dimensions. Thirdly, we review recent advances related to a class of Krylov subspace methods allowing variable preconditioning. We examine in detail flexible Krylov subspace methods including augmentation and/or spectral deflation, where deflation aims at capturing approximate invariant subspace information. We also present flexible Krylov subspace methods for the solution of linear systems with multiple right-hand sides given simultaneously. The efficiency of the numerical methods is demonstrated on challenging applications in seismics requiring the solution of huge linear systems of equations with multiple right-hand sides on parallel distributed memory computers. Finally, we expose current and future prospectives towards the design of efficient algorithms on extreme scale machines for the solution of problems coming from the discretization of partial differential equations

MPI+X: task-based parallelization and dynamic load balance of finite element assembly

The main computing tasks of a finite element code(FE) for solving partial differential equations (PDE's) are the algebraic system assembly and the iterative solver. This work focuses on the first task, in the context of a hybrid MPI+X paradigm. Although we will describe algorithms in the FE context, a similar strategy can be straightforwardly applied to other discretization methods, like the finite volume method. The matrix assembly consists of a loop over the elements of the MPI partition to compute element matrices and right-hand sides and their assemblies in the local system to each MPI partition. In a MPI+X hybrid parallelism context, X has consisted traditionally of loop parallelism using OpenMP. Several strategies have been proposed in the literature to implement this loop parallelism, like coloring or substructuring techniques to circumvent the race condition that appears when assembling the element system into the local system. The main drawback of the first technique is the decrease of the IPC due to bad spatial locality. The second technique avoids this issue but requires extensive changes in the implementation, which can be cumbersome when several element loops should be treated. We propose an alternative, based on the task parallelism of the element loop using some extensions to the OpenMP programming model. The taskification of the assembly solves both aforementioned problems. In addition, dynamic load balance will be applied using the DLB library, especially efficient in the presence of hybrid meshes, where the relative costs of the different elements is impossible to estimate a priori. This paper presents the proposed methodology, its implementation and its validation through the solution of large computational mechanics problems up to 16k cores