Mumps, BoomerAMG, or Pestc?

[Hong Zhang]

Zhengyong,

> I known your excellent codes several months ago. I want to use Mumps as
> direct solver for multi-sources problem and BoomerAMG for real-value based
> iterative solver. I went though the doc of the petsc. It showed that petsc
> offered a easy and top interface to these two packages. So, I think if I
> chose the petsc as my tools, the coding work should be easier for me as only
> data structure of petsc should be leaned, not one for Mumps and one for
> Hypre.
>
> Am I right? can pestc do the work Mumps and BloomAMG do?  I want to get your

Yes, you can use Mumps, BloomAMG and other packages
(see http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/petsc-as/miscellaneous/external.html)
without changing your application code.

> confirm on my decision. As you said, sometimes it is important to make a
> correct decision and also to learn petsc should not be a short way. If petsc
> really do the fast direct solving and fast algebra multigrid algorithms by
> Mumps and BloomAMG, respectively, I think PESTC should definitely be the
> first choice for my following PhD project.

Here is how to get started:

1. install petsc with configure options
'--download-scalapack --download-superlu --download-superlu_dist 
--download-mumps --download-blacs --download-hypre'

(you need F90 compiler for mumps. Mumps requires
scalapack and blacs. I also suggest you install
superlu and superlu_dist - commonly used sparse direct sovlers)

2. build petsc and test the installation

3. test mumps and hypre, e.g.,
cd ~petsc/src/ksp/ksp/examples/tutorials
make ex2
./ex2 -ksp_monitor -ksp_type preonly -pc_type lu 
-pc_factor_mat_solver_package mumps

Norm of error < 1.e-12 iterations 1

./ex2 -ksp_monitor -pc_type hypre -pc_hypre_type boomeramg

   0 KSP Residual norm 7.372609060992e+00
   1 KSP Residual norm 5.824128070306e-02
   2 KSP Residual norm 8.370364383637e-05
Norm of error 8.39541e-05 iterations 2

Let us know if you encounter difficulty,

Hong
>
>
> -- 
> Zhengyong Ren
> AUG Group, Institute of Geophysics
> Department of Geoscience
> NO H 47 Sonneggstrasse 5
> CH-8092, Zürich, Switzerland
> Tel: +41 44 633 37561
> e-mail: renzh at ethz.ch
> Gmail: renzhengyong at gmail.com
>