Scientific Computing Seminar

Date:

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Time:

2:00pm-3:00pm

Location:

50B-4205

Seminar Speaker:

Andreas Stathopoulos
Department of Computer Science
College of William and Mary
http://www.cs.wm.edu/~andreas/

Title:

PRIMME: PReconditioned Iterative MultiMethod Eigensolver
A robust, efficient and flexible Hermitian eigenvalue software

Abstract:

In recent years, many preconditioned eigensolvers have emerged that perform well in many, but not all applications. Moreover, in the related software, robustness has taken a secondary role behind efficiency. In view of the above, our group has developed a robust, efficient multi-method software called PRIMME. PRIMME is based on a Davidson-type main iteration, but it implements various techniques such block, locking, CG-type restarting, and adaptive inner-outer iterations, that allow it to transform to any current eigenvalue method. More than thirty features are controllable and tunable by the user, but a complete set of defaults requires only two to be set. The software runs both on parallel and sequential machines and can use the optimized BLAS and LAPACK libraries of the target machines. Additionally, PRIMME has the ability to sense both the computing environment and the problem solved, and adapt its choice of parameters accordingly.

In this talk, we present an overview of PRIMME, its robustness and efficiency, and show how JDQMR, one of the supported methods, can improve even on the Lanczos/ARPACK methods for Laplacian-type problems that are common in materials science applications.

Sponsor of Seminar:

Osni Marques

Scientific Computing

Contact Esmond G. Ng EGNg@lbl.gov