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16 \title{A scalable multisplitting algorithm for solving large sparse linear systems}
22 \author{Raphaël Couturier \and Lilia Ziane Khodja}
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32 In this paper we revisit the krylov multisplitting algorithm presented in
33 \cite{huang1993krylov} which uses a scalar method to minimize the krylov
34 iterations computed by a multisplitting algorithm. Our new algorithm is based on
35 a parallel multisplitting algorithm with few blocks of large size using a
36 parallel GMRES method inside each block and on a parallel krylov minimization in
37 order to improve the convergence. Some large scale experiments with a 3D Poisson
38 problem are presented. They show the obtained improvements compared to a
39 classical GMRES both in terms of number of iterations and execution times.
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47 \section{Introduction}
49 Iterative methods are used to solve large sparse linear systems of equations of
50 the form $Ax=b$ because they are easier to parallelize than direct ones. Many
51 iterative methods have been proposed and adapted by many researchers. For
52 example, the GMRES method and the Conjugate Gradient method are very well known
53 and used by many researchers ~\cite{S96}. Both the method are based on the
54 Krylov subspace which consists in forming a basis of the sequence of successive
55 matrix powers times the initial residual.
57 When solving large linear systems with many cores, iterative methods often
58 suffer from scalability problems. This is due to their need for collective
59 communications to perform matrix-vector products and reduction operations.
60 Preconditionners can be used in order to increase the convergence of iterative
61 solvers. However, most of the good preconditionners are not sclalable when
62 thousands of cores are used.
65 Traditionnal iterative solvers have global synchronizations that penalize the
66 scalability. Two possible solutions consists either in using asynchronous
67 iterative methods~\cite{ref18} or to use multisplitting algorithms. In this
68 paper, we will reconsider the use of a multisplitting method. In opposition to
69 traditionnal multisplitting method that suffer from slow convergence, as
70 proposed in~\cite{huang1993krylov}, the use of a minimization process can
71 drastically improve the convergence.
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79 The key idea of the multisplitting method for solving a large system
80 of linear equations $Ax=b$ consists in partitioning the matrix $A$ in
83 A = M_l - N_l,~l\in\{1,\ldots,L\},
86 where $M_l$ are nonsingular matrices. Then the linear system is solved
87 by iteration based on the multisplittings as follows
89 x^{k+1}=\displaystyle\sum^L_{l=1} E_l M^{-1}_l (N_l x^k + b),~k=1,2,3,\ldots
92 where $E_l$ are non-negative and diagonal weighting matrices such that
93 $\sum^L_{l=1}E_l=I$ ($I$ is an identity matrix). Thus the convergence
94 of such a method is dependent on the condition
96 \rho(\displaystyle\sum^L_{l=1}E_l M^{-1}_l N_l)<1.
100 The advantage of the multisplitting method is that at each iteration
101 $k$ there are $L$ different linear sub-systems
103 v_l^k=M^{-1}_l N_l x_l^{k-1} + M^{-1}_l b,~l\in\{1,\ldots,L\},
106 to be solved independently by a direct or an iterative method, where
107 $v_l^k$ is the solution of the local sub-system. Thus, the
108 calculations of $v_l^k$ may be performed in parallel by a set of
109 processors. A multisplitting method using an iterative method for
110 solving the $L$ linear sub-systems is called an inner-outer iterative
111 method or a two-stage method. The results $v_l^k$ obtained from the
112 different splittings~(\ref{eq04}) are combined to compute the solution
113 $x^k$ of the linear system by using the diagonal weighting matrices
115 x^k = \displaystyle\sum^L_{l=1} E_l v_l^k,
118 In the case where the diagonal weighting matrices $E_l$ have only zero
119 and one factors (i.e. $v_l^k$ are disjoint vectors), the
120 multisplitting method is non-overlapping and corresponds to the block
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126 \section{Related works}
129 A general framework for studying parallel multisplitting has been presented in
130 \cite{o1985multi} by O'Leary and White. Convergence conditions are given for the
131 most general case. Many authors improved multisplitting algorithms by proposing
132 for example an asynchronous version \cite{bru1995parallel} and convergence
133 conditions \cite{bai1999block,bahi2000asynchronous} in this case or other
134 two-stage algorithms~\cite{frommer1992h,bru1995parallel}.
136 In \cite{huang1993krylov}, the authors proposed a parallel multisplitting
137 algorithm in which all the tasks except one are devoted to solve a sub-block of
138 the splitting and to send their local solution to the first task which is in
139 charge to combine the vectors at each iteration. These vectors form a Krylov
140 basis for which the first task minimizes the error function over the basis to
141 increase the convergence, then the other tasks receive the update solution until
142 convergence of the global system.
146 In \cite{couturier2008gremlins}, the authors proposed practical implementations
147 of multisplitting algorithms that take benefit from multisplitting algorithms to
148 solve large scale linear systems. Inner solvers could be based on scalar direct
149 method with the LU method or scalar iterative one with GMRES.
151 In~\cite{prace-multi}, the authors have proposed a parallel multisplitting
152 algorithm in which large block are solved using a GMRES solver. The authors have
153 performed large scale experimentations upto 32.768 cores and they conclude that
154 asynchronous multisplitting algorithm could more efficient than traditionnal
155 solvers on exascale architecture with hunders of thousands of cores.
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162 \section{A two-stage method with a minimization}
163 Let $Ax=b$ be a given sparse and large linear system of $n$ equations
164 to solve in parallel on $L$ clusters, physically adjacent or
165 geographically distant, where $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$ is a square
166 and nonsingular matrix, $x\in\mathbb{R}^{n}$ is the solution vector
167 and $b\in\mathbb{R}^{n}$ is the right-hand side vector. The
168 multisplitting of this linear system is defined as follows:
172 A & = & [A_{1}, \ldots, A_{L}]\\
173 x & = & [X_{1}, \ldots, X_{L}]\\
174 b & = & [B_{1}, \ldots, B_{L}]
179 where for $l\in\{1,\ldots,L\}$, $A_l$ is a rectangular block of size
180 $n_l\times n$ and $X_l$ and $B_l$ are sub-vectors of size $n_l$, such
181 that $\sum_ln_l=n$. In this case, we use a row-by-row splitting
182 without overlapping in such a way that successive rows of the sparse
183 matrix $A$ and both vectors $x$ and $b$ are assigned to one cluster.
184 So, the multisplitting format of the linear system is defined as
187 \forall l\in\{1,\ldots,L\} \mbox{,~} \displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^{l-1}A_{li}X_i + A_{ll}X_l + \displaystyle\sum_{i=l+1}^{L}A_{li}X_i = B_l,
190 where $A_{li}$ is a block of size $n_l\times n_i$ of the rectangular
191 matrix $A_l$, $X_i\neq X_l$ is a sub-vector of size $n_i$ of the
192 solution vector $x$ and $\sum_{i<l}n_i+\sum_{i>l}n_i+n_l=n$, for all
193 $i\in\{1,\ldots,l-1,l+1,\ldots,L\}$.
195 The multisplitting method proceeds by iteration for solving the linear
196 system in such a way each sub-system
200 A_{ll}X_l = Y_l \mbox{,~such that}\\
201 Y_l = B_l - \displaystyle\sum_{i=1,i\neq l}^{L}A_{li}X_i,
206 is solved independently by a cluster of processors and communication
207 are required to update the right-hand side vectors $Y_l$, such that
208 the vectors $X_i$ represent the data dependencies between the
209 clusters. In this work, we use the parallel GMRES method~\cite{ref34}
210 as an inner iteration method to solve the
211 sub-systems~(\ref{sec03:eq03}). It is a well-known iterative method
212 which gives good performances to solve sparse linear systems in
213 parallel on a cluster of processors.
215 It should be noted that the convergence of the inner iterative solver
216 for the different linear sub-systems~(\ref{sec03:eq03}) does not
217 necessarily involve the convergence of the multisplitting method. It
218 strongly depends on the properties of the sparse linear system to be
219 solved and the computing
220 environment~\cite{o1985multi,ref18}. Furthermore, the multisplitting
221 of the linear system among several clusters of processors increases
222 the spectral radius of the iteration matrix, thereby slowing the
223 convergence. In this paper, we based on the work presented
224 in~\cite{huang1993krylov} to increase the convergence and improve the
225 scalability of the multisplitting methods.
227 In order to accelerate the convergence, we implement the outer
228 iteration of the multisplitting solver as a Krylov subspace method
229 which minimizes some error function over a Krylov subspace~\cite{S96}.
230 The Krylov space of the method that we used is spanned by a basis
231 composed of successive solutions issued from solving the $L$
232 splittings~(\ref{sec03:eq03})
234 S=\{x^1,x^2,\ldots,x^s\},~s\leq n,
237 where for $j\in\{1,\ldots,s\}$, $x^j=[X_1^j,\ldots,X_L^j]$ is a
238 solution of the global linear system. The advantage of such a Krylov
239 subspace is that we need neither an orthogonal basis nor
240 synchronizations between the different clusters to generate this
243 The multisplitting method is periodically restarted every $s$
244 iterations with a new initial guess $\tilde{x}=S\alpha$ which
245 minimizes the error function $\|b-Ax\|_2$ over the Krylov subspace
246 spanned by the vectors of $S$. So, $\alpha$ is defined as the
247 solution of the large overdetermined linear system
252 where $R=AS$ is a dense rectangular matrix of size $n\times s$ and
253 $s\ll n$. This leads us to solve the system of normal equations
258 which is associated with the least squares problem
260 \text{minimize}~\|b-R\alpha\|_2,
263 where $R^T$ denotes the transpose of the matrix $R$. Since $R$ (i.e.
264 $AS$) and $b$ are split among $L$ clusters, the symmetric positive
265 definite system~(\ref{sec03:eq06}) is solved in parallel. Thus, an
266 iterative method would be more appropriate than a direct one to solve
267 this system. We use the parallel conjugate gradient method for the
268 normal equations CGNR~\cite{S96,refCGNR}.
270 \begin{algorithm}[!t]
271 \caption{A two-stage linear solver with inner iteration GMRES method}
272 \begin{algorithmic}[1]
273 \Input $A_l$ (local sparse matrix), $B_l$ (local right-hand side), $x^0$ (initial guess)
274 \Output $X_l$ (local solution vector)\vspace{0.2cm}
275 \State Load $A_l$, $B_l$, $x^0$
276 \State Initialize the minimizer $\tilde{x}^0=x^0$
277 \For {$k=1,2,3,\ldots$ until the global convergence}
278 \State Restart with $x^0=\tilde{x}^{k-1}$: \textbf{for} $j=1,2,\ldots,s$ \textbf{do}
279 \State\hspace{0.5cm} Inner iteration solver: \Call{InnerSolver}{$x^0$, $j$}
280 \State\hspace{0.5cm} Construct the basis $S$: add the column vector $X_l^j$ to the matrix $S_l^k$
281 \State\hspace{0.5cm} Exchange the local solution vector $X_l^j$ with the neighboring clusters
282 \State\hspace{0.5cm} Compute the dense matrix $R$: $R_l^{k,j}=\sum^L_{i=1}A_{li}X_i^j$
283 \State\textbf{end for}
284 \State Minimization $\|b-R\alpha\|_2$: \Call{UpdateMinimizer}{$S_l$, $R$, $b$, $k$}
285 \State Local solution of the linear system $Ax=b$: $X_l^k=\tilde{X}_l^k$
286 \State Exchange the local minimizer $\tilde{X}_l^k$ with the neighboring clusters
291 \Function {InnerSolver}{$x^0$, $j$}
292 \State Compute the local right-hand side: $Y_l = B_l - \sum^L_{i=1,i\neq l}A_{li}X_i^0$
293 \State Solving the local splitting $A_{ll}X_l^j=Y_l$ using the parallel GMRES method, such that $X_l^0$ is the initial guess
294 \State \Return $X_l^j$
299 \Function {UpdateMinimizer}{$S_l$, $R$, $b$, $k$}
300 \State Solving the normal equations $(R^k)^TR^k\alpha^k=(R^k)^Tb$ in parallel by $L$ clusters using the parallel CGNR method
301 \State Compute the local minimizer: $\tilde{X}_l^k=S_l^k\alpha^k$
302 \State \Return $\tilde{X}_l^k$
308 The main key points of the multisplitting method to solve a large
309 sparse linear system are given in Algorithm~\ref{algo:01}. This
310 algorithm is based on a two-stage method with a minimization using the
311 GMRES iterative method as an inner solver. It is executed in parallel
312 by each cluster of processors. The matrices and vectors with the
313 subscript $l$ represent the local data for the cluster $l$, where
314 $l\in\{1,\ldots,L\}$. The two-stage solver uses two different parallel
315 iterative algorithms: the GMRES method to solve each splitting on a
316 cluster of processors, and the CGNR method executed in parallel by all
317 clusters to minimize the function error over the Krylov subspace
318 spanned by $S$. The algorithm requires two global synchronizations
319 between the $L$ clusters. The first one is performed at line~$12$ in
320 Algorithm~\ref{algo:01} to exchange the local values of the vector
321 solution $x$ (i.e. the minimizer $\tilde{x}$) required to restart the
322 multisplitting solver. The second one is needed to construct the
323 matrix $R$ of the Krylov subspace. We choose to perform this latter
324 synchronization $s$ times in every outer iteration $k$ (line~$7$ in
325 Algorithm~\ref{algo:01}). This is a straightforward way to compute the
326 matrix-matrix multiplication $R=AS$. We implement all
327 synchronizations by using the MPI collective communication
331 \section{Experiments}
333 In order to illustrate the interest of our algorithm. We have compared our
334 algorithm with the GMRES method which a very well used method in many
335 situations. We have chosen to focus on only one problem which is very simple to
336 implement: a 3 dimension Poisson problem.
341 \nabla u&=f \mbox{~in~} \omega\\
342 u &=0 \mbox{~on~} \Gamma=\partial \omega
347 After discretization, with a finite difference scheme, a seven point stencil is
350 \section{Conclusion and perspectives}
352 Other applications (=> other matrices)\\
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