An efficient multi-core implementation of a novel HSS-structured multifrontal solver using randomized sampling

We present a sparse linear system solver that is based on a multifrontal variant of Gaussian elimination, and exploits low-rank approximation of the resulting dense frontal matrices. We use hierarchically semiseparable (HSS) matrices, which have low-rank off-diagonal blocks, to approximate the frontal matrices. For HSS matrix construction, a randomized sampling algorithm is used together with interpolative decompositions. The combination of the randomized compression with a fast ULV HSS factorization leads to a solver with lower computational complexity than the standard multifrontal method for many applications, resulting in speedups up to 7 fold for problems in our test suite. The implementation targets many-core systems by using task parallelism with dynamic runtime scheduling. Numerical experiments show performance improvements over state-of-the-art sparse direct solvers. The implementation achieves high performance and good scalability on a range of modern shared memory parallel systems, including the Intel Xeon Phi (MIC). The code is part of a software package called STRUMPACK -- STRUctured Matrices PACKage, which also has a distributed memory component for dense rank-structured matrices

A distributed-memory package for dense Hierarchically Semi-Separable matrix computations using randomization

We present a distributed-memory library for computations with dense structured matrices. A matrix is considered structured if its off-diagonal blocks can be approximated by a rank-deficient matrix with low numerical rank. Here, we use Hierarchically Semi-Separable representations (HSS). Such matrices appear in many applications, e.g., finite element methods, boundary element methods, etc. Exploiting this structure allows for fast solution of linear systems and/or fast computation of matrix-vector products, which are the two main building blocks of matrix computations. The compression algorithm that we use, that computes the HSS form of an input dense matrix, relies on randomized sampling with a novel adaptive sampling mechanism. We discuss the parallelization of this algorithm and also present the parallelization of structured matrix-vector product, structured factorization and solution routines. The efficiency of the approach is demonstrated on large problems from different academic and industrial applications, on up to 8,000 cores. This work is part of a more global effort, the STRUMPACK (STRUctured Matrices PACKage) software package for computations with sparse and dense structured matrices. Hence, although useful on their own right, the routines also represent a step in the direction of a distributed-memory sparse solver

Geometry-Oblivious FMM for Compressing Dense SPD Matrices

We present GOFMM (geometry-oblivious FMM), a novel method that creates a hierarchical low-rank approximation, "compression," of an arbitrary dense symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrix. For many applications, GOFMM enables an approximate matrix-vector multiplication in $N \log N$ or even $N$ time, where $N$ is the matrix size. Compression requires $N \log N$ storage and work. In general, our scheme belongs to the family of hierarchical matrix approximation methods. In particular, it generalizes the fast multipole method (FMM) to a purely algebraic setting by only requiring the ability to sample matrix entries. Neither geometric information (i.e., point coordinates) nor knowledge of how the matrix entries have been generated is required, thus the term "geometry-oblivious." Also, we introduce a shared-memory parallel scheme for hierarchical matrix computations that reduces synchronization barriers. We present results on the Intel Knights Landing and Haswell architectures, and on the NVIDIA Pascal architecture for a variety of matrices.Comment: 13 pages, accepted by SC'1

Analytical Methods for Structured Matrix Computations

The design of fast algorithms is not only about achieving faster speeds but also about retaining the ability to control the error and numerical stability. This is crucial to the reliability of computed numerical solutions. This dissertation studies topics related to structured matrix computations with an emphasis on their numerical analysis aspects and algorithms. The methods discussed here are all based on rich analytical results that are mathematically justified. In chapter 2, we present a series of comprehensive error analyses to an analytical matrix compression method and it serves as a theoretical explanation of the proxy point method. These results are also important instructions on optimizing the performance. In chapter 3, we propose a non-Hermitian eigensolver by combining HSS matrix techniques with a contour-integral based method. Moreover, probabilistic analysis enables further acceleration of the method in addition to manipulating the HSS representation algebraically. An application of the HSS matrix is discussed in chapter 4 where we design a structured preconditioner for linear systems generated by AIIM. We improve the numerical stability for the matrix-free HSS construction process and make some additional modifications tailored to this particular problem

Lecture 13: A low-rank factorization framework for building scalable algebraic solvers and preconditioners

Factorization based preconditioning algorithms, most notably incomplete LU (ILU) factorization, have been shown to be robust and applicable to wide ranges of problems. However, traditional ILU algorithms are not amenable to scalable implementation. In recent years, we have seen a lot of investigations using low-rank compression techniques to build approximate factorizations.A key to achieving lower complexity is the use of hierarchical matrix algebra, stemming from the H-matrix research. In addition, the multilevel algorithm paradigm provides a good vehicle for a scalable implementation. The goal of this lecture is to give an overview of the various hierarchical matrix formats, such as hierarchically semi-separable matrix (HSS), hierarchically off-diagonal low-rank matrix (HODLR) and Butterfly matrix, and explain the algorithm differences and approximation quality. We will illustrate many practical issues of these algorithms using our parallel libraries STRUMPACK and ButterflyPACK, and demonstrate their effectiveness and scalability while solving the very challenging problems, such as high frequency wave equations

Sparse Approximate Multifrontal Factorization with Butterfly Compression for High Frequency Wave Equations

We present a fast and approximate multifrontal solver for large-scale sparse linear systems arising from finite-difference, finite-volume or finite-element discretization of high-frequency wave equations. The proposed solver leverages the butterfly algorithm and its hierarchical matrix extension for compressing and factorizing large frontal matrices via graph-distance guided entry evaluation or randomized matrix-vector multiplication-based schemes. Complexity analysis and numerical experiments demonstrate $\mathcal{O}(N\log^2 N)$ computation and $\mathcal{O}(N)$ memory complexity when applied to an $N\times N$ sparse system arising from 3D high-frequency Helmholtz and Maxwell problems