[petsc-users] petsc-users Digest, Vol 41, Issue 17

Pavanakumar Mohanamuraly m.pavanakumar at gmail.com
Thu May 3 12:28:26 CDT 2012


Dear Matt,



> > Currently I am planning to use Petsc Krylov solver for implicit time
> > integration of my CFD code. I need some pointer on the implementation. I
> am
> > providing a detailed list of things I am not very clear with in both the
> > documentation and the mailing list archives.
> >
> > --> The equations to be solved is of the form :  [ I / \delta t + J ]
> \delta
> > U^n = - R[ U^n ]
> >
> > --> The Jacobian J is hard to evaluate exactly and hence we use the
> finite
> > difference method to evaluate J. I want to use a matrix-free approach so
> > all I need is the action of this J on some vector v.
> >
> > --> Jv = \frac{\partial R}{\partial U}v = ( R[ U^n + hv ] - R[ U^] ) / h,
> > h is some parameter. Since I is identity matrix and \delta t is fixed
> this
> > diagonal matrix is trivial to evaluate. Thus [ I / \delta t + J ] is
> > available as a user define function in my solver.
> >
> > 1) Vector U^n is from an unstructured node distribution and is
> partitioned
> > outside of Petsc. I have both the global indexing and local indexing
> > information along with the ghost node information.
> > 2) I have already defined functions to move data across the ghost nodes
> > given the local variable address and memory stride/offset information.
> > 3) In Jacobian-vector Jv evaluation, one has to exchange the ghost cell
> > values of vector v with adjacent processor before the calculation is
> done.
> > 4) I can write the Jacobian-vector Jv evaluation function to perform
> ghost
> > node exchange before evaluation but I am not clear as to how I can
> > interface my local arrays and local / global indexing information into
> > Petsc.
> > 5) I understand that I have to create a Matrix Shell for the matrix free
> > method and define my user-defined function to evaluate the matrix-vector
> > product given an input vector. But it is not clear as to how Petsc
> > understands how I order my vectors locally and how that corresponds to
> the
> > global indexes.
> > 6) I cannot use the DA object as it is for structured/contiguous
> > partitioning .i.e., the local indices don't correspond to contiguous
> global
> > ordering/indexing.
> > 7) I also don't want to use the unstructured mesh and decomposition
> > routines in Petsc and I already have my own.
> >
> > Can this be done in Petsc ?
> >
>
> Yes, there are ??? parts:
>
>  1) You want to manage unstructured data yourself. The easiest way to do
> this now is to implement a DM. You just need to provide
>      routines for making global and local vectors (you have this), and
> routines for mapping between them (you have this). You will have
>      to use petsc-dev, but this definitely looks like the easiest thing to
> do.
>
>

Thanks for the reply.



>     a) If you consider using part of our infrastructure, you can build a
> PetscSection and a PetscSF, and everything else will be automatically
>         calculated. These are very new things, so there is not a lot of
> documentation, and thus you might prefer to do the whole DM yourself.
>
>
Most of the tutorial slides point out that DM is for structured arrays
(maybe this mislead me). Can you point me to the functions that i would
have to use to create

1) DM array ghost cells
2) Local/Global indexing
3) DM array exchange

It would be nice you can share some code snippet on writing our own DM's.

 2) You want to do matrix-free action of your Jacobian. This is easy using
> MatShell, however the real question is How will you precondition that
>       equation?


Currently I use the Jacobi diagonal preconditioner. I use the largest
spectral radius of my Euler equations \lambda = U + a. BTW I actually have
implemented my own parallel Krylov solver for my CFD code using the
algorithm in Yousuf Saad's book. But my advisor urged me to use Petsc so
that I would be able to use the various pre-conditioners in Petsc and the
code would run more faster/optimal. I have not written my Krylov solver
optimally.

So is there is no way I can use preconditioning in matrix-free context in
Petsc ?

Regards,

--

Pavanakumar Mohanamuraly
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