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 class of multilevel parallel preconditioning strategies

In this paper, we introduce a class of recursive multilevel preconditioning strategies suited for solving large sparse linear systems of equations on modern day architectures. They are based on a reordering of the input matrix into a nested bordered block diagonal form, which allows a nested formulation of the preconditioners. The first one, which we refer to as nested SSOR (NSSOR), requires only the factorization of diagonal blocks at the innermost level of the recursive formulation. Hence, its construction is embarassingly parallel, and the memory requirements are very limited. Next two are nested versions of Modified ILU preconditioner with row sum (NMILUR) and colsum (NMILUC) property. We compare these methods in terms of iteration number, memory requirements, and overall solve time, with ILU(0) with natural ordering and nested dissection ordering, and MILU. We find that NSSOR compares favorably with ILU(0) with nested dissection ordering, while NMILUR and NMILUC outperform the other methods for certain matrices in our test set. It is proved that the NSSOR method is convergent when the input matrix is SPD. The preconditioners are designed to be suitable for parallel computing.Dans ce papier nous décrivons une classe de préconditionneurs multiniveaux parallèles pour résoudre des systèmes linéaires de grande taille. Ils se basent sur une renumérotation de la matrice d'entrée en forme block diagonale bornée et emboitée, qui permet une définition emboitée des préconditionneurs. Nous prouvons qu'un des préconditionneurs, NSSOR, converge quand la matrice d'entrée est symmétrique et définie positive. Les préconditionneurs sont adaptés au calcul parallèle

Parallel preconditioning for sparse linear equations

A popular class of preconditioners is 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 asmultigrid and domain decomposition, this class of preconditioners are primarily algebraic in nature and can in principle be applied to any sparse matrices. In this paper we will discuss some new viewpoints for the construction of eective preconditioners. In particular, 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

Fourier Analysis of Modified Nested Factorization Preconditioner for Three-Dimensional Isotropic Problems

For solving large sparse symmetric linear systems, arising from the discretization of elliptic problems, the preferred choice is the preconditioned con- jugate gradient method. The convergence rate of this method mainly depends on the condition number of the preconditioner chosen. Using Fourier analy- sis the condition number estimate of common preconditioning techniques for two dimensional elliptic problem has been studied by Chan and Elman [SIAM Rev., 31 (1989), pp. 20-49]. Nested Factorization(NF) is one of the powerful preconditioners for systems arising from discretization of elliptic or hyperbolic partial differential equations. The observed convergence behavior of NF is bet- ter compared to well known ILU(0) or modified ILU. In this paper we introduce Modified Nested Factorization(MNF) which is an improvement over NF. It is proved that condition number of modified NF is O(h−1 ). An optimal value of the parameter for the model problem is derived. The condition number of modified NF predicts the condition number of NF in limiting sense when the parameter is close to zero. Moreover it is proved that condition number of NF is atleast O(h−1 ). Numerical results justify Fourier analytic method by exhibiting remarkable similarity in spectrum of periodic and Dirichlet problems

Results on the effect of orderings on SSOR and ILU preconditionings

It is known that for SSOR and ILU preconditionings for solving systems of linear equations, orderings can have an enormous impact on robustness, convergence rate and parallelism. Unfortunately, it has been observed that there is an inverse relation between the convergence rate and the parallelism of typical orderings used in practice. This paper presents some numerical experiments with simple matrices to illustrate this behavior as well as a new theoretical result which sheds some light on this phenomenon and also gives an upper bound on the convergence rate of a number of preconditioners in popular use

Closer to the solutions: iterative linear solvers

The solution of dense linear systems received much attention after the second world war, and by the end of the sixties, most of the problems associated with it had been solved. For a long time, Wilkinson's \The Algebraic Eigenvalue Problem" [107], other than the title suggests, became also the standard textbook for the solution of linear systems. When it became clear that partial dierential equations could be solved numerically, to a level of accuracy that was of interest for application areas (such as reservoir engineering, and reactor diusion modeling), there was a strong need for the fast solution of the discretized systems, and iterative methods became popular for these problems

Iterative Solutions of Large-Scale Soil-Structure Problems

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH