MPIAIJ and MatSetValuesBlocked

[Matthew Knepley]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Randall Mackie <rlmackie862 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Jed,
>
> Can you explain how to tell if the matrix is truly blocked? What's the
> difference between a blocked matrix and one with several degrees of freedom
> at each node, or are they the same thing? I'm solving Maxwell's equations
> in 3D, so I have three vector field components at each node, is that what
> you mean by blocked?


Yes, that is blocked.

  Matt


>
> Thanks, Randy
>
>
> Jed Brown wrote:
>
>> Ryan Yan wrote:
>>
>>> Could you make a little bit more clarification
>>> on why the MatSetValuesBlocked() have some advantage on blocked
>>> structure?
>>>
>>
>> In addition to the assembly advantages that Satish pointed out, BAIJ
>> requires less storage for the column indices, effectively improving the
>> arithmetic intensity of many kernels, and speeding up matrix
>> factorization (e.g. symbolic factorization only needs to compute fill in
>> terms of blocks instead of individual elements).  The use of inodes with
>> AIJ (default when applicable) reduces the memory bandwidth requirements
>> of the column indices, turns point relaxation smoothers (SOR) into
>> stronger block relaxation, and allows a certain amount of unrolling.
>> BAIJ requires even less metadata, provides more regular memory access,
>> and does more unrolling.
>>
>> If your matrix is truly blocked, BAIJ should provide better performance
>> with all preconditioners that support it.  Many third-party
>> preconditioners will not work with BAIJ, so it is useful to give your
>> matrix a prefix (or check the options database if you are getting your
>> matrix from a DA or similar) so that you can set it's type with
>> -foo_mat_type when using a preconditioner that requires it.
>>
>> Jed
>>
>>


-- 
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mcs.anl.gov/pipermail/petsc-users/attachments/20090504/01c23a6b/attachment-0001.htm>