[petsc-users] Regarding changing vector/matrix type at runtime

[Jed Brown]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 1:25 PM, Mohammad Mirzadeh <mirzadeh at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I've added a small function to only solve the linear system in parallel
> for problems that are not big enough to justify parallelizing the whole
> thing but would still take some time to solve in serial -- so far It's been
> handy. To prevent extra copy from my own format to petsc's, I'm using
> VecCreateMPIWithArray and MatCreateMPIWithSplitArray functions and they
> work with MPI on very few processes (like 4 or so). I have a couple of
> questions:
>
> 1) Is it worth considering using pThread and/or CUSP versions of the
> matrices for such problems?
>

The old pthread types are being removed in favor of threading support for
normal formats.


> 2) If so, what would be a better approach. Using hardwired vector types in
> the code or using generic VecCreate functions to be able to change the type
> at run-time?
>

Just use VecSetType()/MatSetType() to switch. You should really profile
just using MatSetValues() to assemble. It's very likely that you are
needlessly complicating your code by trying to skip a copy.


> 3) Are there equivalent versions of XXXWithArray functions for CUSP and
> pThread types? I don't seem to find them in manual page.
>

The CUSP case wouldn't help because chances are you are not holding memory
in CUSP format living on the device.
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