[petsc-dev] IS block size meaning

[Matthew Knepley]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 5:32 AM Vaclav Hapla <vaclav.hapla at erdw.ethz.ch>
wrote:

> Hello
>
> I would like to move the discussion from the PR
> https://bitbucket.org/petsc/petsc/pull-requests/1076/fix-issetblocksize_general because
> it's quite a general concern.
>
> It's about the meaning of block size for IS.
>
> Barry thinks that IS block size is something completely different than Vec
> block size:
> Blocked IS "consists of continous runs of entries where the first entry of
> a run is divisible by the bs so for example: for a block size of 2 the IS 0
> 1 4 5 10 11 is a block IS. 0 1 3 5 10 11 does not have a block size.
> Another way of looking at it is that a ISGeneral with a given blocksize can
> be converted to a ISCreateBlock() while other ISs are not (except with the
> trivial block size of 1)."
>
> Barry originally wanted to enforce this property for ISGENERAL. But I say
> it's only checked in ISSetBlockSize_General() under PETSC_DEBUG and only if
> indices are set before (see the PR description and diff), and from
> documentation it’s also not really obvious. There is otherwise nothing
> which would prevent one from breaking the "block-wise contiguity"
> requirement.
>
> At least Matt and other contributors to HDF5 IO for IS and DMPlex
> (including me) grasped the same meaning of "blocksize" as Vec has without
> that additional requirement. In this context, it's used just as an "integer
> vector". For instance, in the dataset /viz/topology/cells in DMPlex HDF5 IO
> each block is an element and each entry is a vertex index.
>
> My opinion is that if anybody wants to have IS with Barry's original
> meaning of "blocked", they can just use ISCreateBlock() which really
> enforces "block-wise contiguity" by API and data structure. There could be
> also an additional standalone function ISCheckBlockwiseContiguous() with
> the same checking code as is currently in ISSetBlockSize_General().
>
> On the other hand, if I’m thinking about any alternative, it could perhaps
> be PetscSection. But it would be quite some manpower to
> implement PetscSection IO and employ it in DMPlex IO. And I'm not sure
> about the worth of the outcome for users.
>
> Opinions?
>

Okay, this makes it clear to me.

I would prefer the understanding of blocksize that matches Vec and Mat, and
to let ISBlock handle the specialized situation.

  Thanks,

     Matt


> Vaclav
>


-- 
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
experiments lead.
-- Norbert Wiener

https://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~knepley/ <http://www.caam.rice.edu/~mk51/>
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