[petsc-dev] Alternatives to cholmod

[Dave Nystrom]

Jed Brown writes:
 > On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Dave Nystrom <dnystrom1 at comcast.net> wrote:
 > 
 > > I've been using cholmod from SuiteSparse for over a year now to solve one
 > > of
 > > my linear systems that is difficult to solve with an iterative method.  Are
 > > there other sparse direct solvers, such as clique, that I should try
 > > sometime?  My linear system is SPD and I am solving it on a single node.
 > >  My
 > > code has not yet been parallelized using MPI - it is only a 2D code.
 > >
 > 
 > Clique is a distributed memory package, though of course it can be used in
 > serial. You can also try MUMPS. But Cholmod should be a good package for
 > this scenario. Are you having problems with it or just looking for other
 > (likely slower) packages to spend time installing?

Cholmod is working fine for me.  I have tried other packages in the past such
as MUMPS and SuperLU and found them to be slower.  Actually a lot slower -
like 2x to 4x slower.

I was just wondering if there were newer packages that would be worth trying
i.e. that might have even better performance than cholmod.  Sounds like not.