MULTIFRONTAL VS FRONTAL TECHNIQUES FOR CHEMICAL PROCESS SIMULATION ONSUPERCOMPUTERS

A critical computational step in large-scale process simulation using rigorous equation-based models is the solution of a sparse linear equa tion system. Traditional sparse solvers based on indirect addressing a re not effective on supercomputers because they do not vectorize well. By relying on vectorized dense matrix kernels, the multifrontal and f rontal methods provide much better performance, as demonstrated using several examples. These examples are also used to compare the performa nce of frontal and multifrontal solvers. On problems with good initial matrix orderings the frontal method is most effective, while without a good initial ordering the multifrontal method is attractive.