PARASOL
Long Term Research (LTR)
PARASOL
Aims
PARASOL is a long term research ESPRIT IV project (Domain 4, Task 4.2) which started on January 1st, 1996 and will last 3 years. Within the project new parallel algorithms for the direct solution of sparse systems of linear equations, for the iterative solution of such systems based on either multigrid or domain decomposition and for their preconditioning will be developed. These algorithms will be available in the public domain.
An industrial requirement in the areas of computational Fluid Dynamics and Structural Analysis applications is to be able to solve large sparse linear equation systems (>1M equations). Many existing codes use either direct solvers or iterative solvers with preconditioning - both have to solve large sparse matrices. Simple iterative methods such as Conjugate Gradient or SOR do not work for stability reasons.
Solving linear equation systems of such sizes in a reasonable time requires the use of powerful MPP systems. Therefore, message-passing versions of direct sparse solvers and various iterative methods are needed. Up to now, however, no generally available library of scalable parallel sparse matrix solvers or preconditioners exists.
Objectives
The PARASOL project has the following main objectives:
- To develop sparse matrix algorithms according to the needs of industry.
- To implement portable prototypes of these solvers and to demonstrate them working on different HPC systems.
- To specify an open library interface for the PARASOL library.
- To integrate the solvers and additional utilities into the PARASOL library and provide an interface to the state-of-the-art programming environment TRAPPER.
- To establish continuous library support.
- To evaluate the PARASOL library and utilities by industrial application developers.
The PARASOL consortium consists of
- leading European research organizations with a well-known experience and track-record in the development of parallel solvers (CERFACS, ENSEEIHT, GMD-SCAI, ONERA, RAL, Univ. of Bergen).
- industrial code developers who define the requirements for PARASOL and will use its results (INPRO, MacNeal-Schwendler, Det Norske Veritas (DNV), Polyflow, Apex Technologies).
- the two leading European HPC software companies who will exploit the project results and will provide programming development tools (GENIAS, PALLAS).
PARASOL will produce the following tangible results:
- specification of an open library interface for parallel solvers (which will be disseminated to other solver developers outside the project)
- solver prototypes based on MPI, such as the parallel distributed sparse direct solver MUMPS (MUltifrontal Massively Parallel sparse direct Solver.)
- a prototype of the PARASOL library
- assessment and evaluation reports by industrial software developers
- technology transfer and commercial exploitation of the project results.
Local contacts: Iain S. Duff (duff@cerfacs.fr) and Jean-Yves L'Excellent (excelle@cerfacs.fr)
