Non-standard parallel solution strategies for distributed sparse linear systems

Abstract

A number of techniques are described for solving sparse linear systems on parallel platforms. The general approach used is a domai n-decomposition type method in which a processor is assigned a certain number of rows of the linear system to be solved. Strategies that are discussed include non-standard graph partitioners, and a forced loadbalance technique for the local iterations. A common practice when partitioning a graph is to seek to minimize the number of cut-edges and to have an equal number of equations per processor. It is shown that partitioners that take into account the values of the matrix entries may be more effective.